VOICES 
FROM  THE  VOID 

Six  Years  Experience  in 
Automatic  Communications 


HESTER  TRAVERS  SMITH 


m  MEMDmAJA 
Gharle s    Jos s e lyn 


no 


"PSYCH. 


VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

Six  Years9  Experience    in 
Automatic  Communications 

BY 

HESTER  TRAVERS  SMITH 

With  an  Introduction  by 

Professor  SIR  W.  F.  BARRETT,  F.R.S. 


The  author  of  this  book,  Mrs.  Hester  Travers 
Smith,  is  the  eldest  daughter  of  the  late  Professor 
Edward  Dowden,  and  has  for  many  years  been  a 
close  personal  friend  of  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
scientific  investigators  of  psychic  matters.  Sir  William 
F.  Barrett,  in  his  introduction,  says  the  following 
regarding  the  work  of  the  author: 

"We  have  here  the  personal  experiences  of  a 
gifted  psychic  or  automatist.  Mrs.  Travers 
Smith  has  given  me  the  opportunity  of  being 
present  at  sittings  since  the  development  of 
her  psychic  power.  I  can,  therefore,  testify  to 
the  conscientious  care,  the  patience,  and  the 
wisdom  which  she  has  shown  throughout  the 
experiments  she  has  conducted,  her  whole  aim 
being  to  enlarge  our  knowledge  in  this  difficult 
but  important  field  of  enquiry." 

It  will  be  of  interest  to  intending  readers  of  this 
important  book  to  know  that  some  of  the  most  care- 
ful, conservative  and  responsible  of  American  investi- 
gators have  read  this  book  and  urged  its  publication. 


VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 


VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

SIX    YEARS'    EXPERIENCE    IN 
AUTOMATIC  COMMUNICATIONS 


BY 

HESTER  TRAVERS   SMITH 

WITH  INTRODUCTION  BY 

PROFESSOR  Sir  W.  F.  BARRETT,  F.R.S. 


NEW  YORK 
E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 

68 1   Fifth  Avenue     * 


Copyright,  1919,  by 
E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY     j£j£jr 


All  Rights  Reserved 


----- 


EDUC. 
PSYCH. 

UBf. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


FOREWORD 

IN  introducing  this  book  to  the  public,  I 
should  like  to  say  that  my  deepest  thanks 
are  due  to  Sir  William  Barrett,  who  has  helped 
and  encouraged  me  in  every  possible  way,  and 
to  whom  I  largely  owe  my  interest  in  Psychical 
Research. 

I  also  thank  the  sitters  at  my  circle,  who 
have  always  been  most  patient,  friendly,  and 
helpful;  what  I  have  written  is  quite  as  much 
a  record  of  their  work  as  my  own. 

I  am  grateful  to  the  Rev.  Savell  Hicks  and 
Mr.  Lennox  Robinson,  both  of  whom  helped 
me  by  valuable  suggestions. 

And,  lastly,  I  dedicate  "Voices  from  the 
Void"  to  my  friend  and  fellow-worker 

"Dorothy." 


515846 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

Foreword v 

Introduction ix 

I.  Introductory i 

II.  The  Personality  of  the  Control  .      .      .13 

III.  The  Communicator — Evidence  of  the  Sur- 

vival       34 

IV.  Telepathy  and  Automatism     ,      .      .      .65 

V.  " Prevision" 89 

VI.  Mediumship  and  the  Mental  Sensations 

of  the  Medium 104 

vii.  psychometry   through  the  medium  and 

the  Control 118 

VIII.  Summing  up J39 

Appendix:  Hints  to  Experimenters  at  the 
Ouija-table 158 


Vll 


INTRODUCTION 
By  Professor  Sir  W.  F.  Barrett,  F.R.S. 

THE  widespread  and  growing  interest  in 
psychical  research  has  led  to  the  publica- 
tion in  recent  years  of  many  books  on  this  sub- 
ject and  on  the  problem  of  survival  after 
bodily  death.  Many  of  these  books  are  of  no 
real  value,  owing  to  the  uncritical  habit  of 
mind  of  the  writers.  The  present  little  book 
is  of  a  very  different  order,  and  it  is  therefore 
with  much  pleasure  I  heartily  commend  it  to 
the  reader.  We  have  here  the  personal  ex- 
periences of  a  gifted  psychic  or  automatist, 
who  is  an  educated  lady,  the  eldest  daughter 
of  that  distinguished  man,  the  late  Professor 
Edward  Dowden. 

ix 


x  INTRODUCTION 

Mrs.  Travers  Smith  has  for  many  years 
been  a  friend  of  mine,  and  has  given  me  the 
opportunity  of  being  present  at  numerous  sit- 
tings since  the  development  of  her  psychic 
power.  I  can  therefore  testify  to  the  con- 
scientious care,  the  patience,  and  the  wisdom 
which  she  has  shown  throughout  the  long  and 
tedious  experiments  she  has  conducted,  her 
only  aim  being  to  enlarge  our  knowledge  in 
this  difficult  but  important  field  of  inquiry.  As 
the  reader  will  notice,  Mrs.  Travers  Smith  is 
not  a  credulous  or  hasty  investigator;  on  the 
contrary,  the  trend  of  her  mind  is  healthily 
skeptical,  and  hence  the  opinions  at  which  she 
has  arrived  cannot  be  dismissed  as  the  product 
of  morbid  curiosity  or  the  mere  will  to  believe. 

The  experimental  study  of  automatism 
which  this  book  presents  will  therefore,  I  am 
convinced,  be  of  great  interest  and  value  to 
the  student  of  abnormal  psychology.  As  the 
author  states,  at  the  outset  of  her  investiga- 
tions she  held  the  view  that  the  phenomena  ob- 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

tained  were  merely  due  to  the  emergence  of 
that  part  of  the  personality  of  the  sitters 
below  the  limen  or  threshold  of  consciousness. 
Our  conscious  waking  self  speaks  through  the 
voluntary  action  of  our  muscles,  whereas  our 
subconscious  or  subliminal  self  reveals  itself 
through  the  involuntary  or  automatic  action 
of  our  muscles.  Hence  in  automatic  writing, 
or  spelling  messages  through  the  so-called 
"ouija  board,"  the  simplest  explanation  is  that 
which  Mrs.  Travers  Smith  at  first  adopted, 
that  automatism  was  merely  a  method  of 
studying  ourselves:  a  method  by  which  the 
hidden  part  of  our  personality  came  to  the 
surface,  so  that  incidents  we  had  forgotten,  or 
impressions  made  upon  us  which  were  too 
feeble  to  excite  consciousness,  were  unex- 
pectedly revealed. 

Doubtless  this  explanation  covers  much  of 
the  ground,  but  the  careful  investigator  soon 
finds  it  is  inadequate,  and  it  becomes  necessary 
to  add  to  it  telepathy  from  other  living  minds, 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

and  also  to  assume  the  existence  of  higher 
faculties  in  the  subliminal  than  we  are  aware 
of  in  our  ordinary  conscious  personality.  As 
Mrs.  Henry  Sidgwick,  one  of  the  most  critical 
and  able  students  of  the  whole  subject,  has  re- 
marked, "This  extension  of  human  faculty  in 
the  subliminal  self  shows  that  there  is  more 
of  us  than  we  are  normally  aware  of,  and  sug- 
gests that  the  limitations  imposed  by  our 
bodies  are  temporary  limitations. "  The  ex- 
periments recorded  in  this  volume  certainly  re- 
veal supernormal  faculties,  such  as  clair- 
voyance of  seeing  without  eyes — i.e.,  the 
psychical  perception  of  objects,  as,  for  ex- 
ample, when  the  disarranged  letters  of  the 
alphabet  were  correctly  indicated  although  the 
sitters  were  effectively  blindfolded.  Further- 
more, we  are  driven  to  the  conclusion  that 
occasionally  telepathy  from  some  unseen  intelli- 
gence— which  purports  to  be  a  deceased  per- 
son— is  operative,  and  directs  the  messages 
received.    These  conclusions,  which  have  been 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

reached  by  many  competent  investigators,  have 
been  independently  arrived  at  by  the  author  of 
this  book  from  her  own  experiences. 

But  the  most  interesting  part  of  the  experi- 
ments recorded  by  Mrs.  Travers  Smith  is  the 
evidence  they  afford  of  the  origin  and  nature 
of  what  are  termed  the  "controls"  operating 
upon  the  automatist  at  different  sittings.  The 
word  control  is  usually  applied  to  the  intelli- 
gence which  acts  directly  upon  the  automatist, 
and  which  is  often  employed  as  the  amanu- 
ensis or  interpreter  of  the  so-called  communi- 
cator from  the  Unseen.  Mrs.  Sidgwick,  in  her 
critical  monograph  on  the  psychology  of  Mrs. 
Piper's  trance  phenomena,  considered  the  con- 
trols of  Mrs.  Piper  were  nothing  more  than 
a  real  or  imaginary  dissociation  of  the  person- 
ality of  the  medium  during  the  trance  state. 
There  is  much  to  support  this  view,  though  it 
was  abandoned  by  Dr.  Hodgson  in  the  later 
stages  of  his  prolonged  study  of  Mrs.  Piper,  in 
favor   of   the   spiritistic   hypothesis.     Hence 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

the  value  of  Mrs.  Travers  Smith's  study  of 
these  controls  as  affording  fresh  evidence  of 
their  origin.    As  will  be  seen,  they  present  to 
us  a  collection  of  what  appear  to  be  wholly 
different  personalities,  which  retain  their  dis- 
tinctive character  throughout.  If  I  may  ex- 
press an  opinion  on  the  matter,  it  seems  to  me 
more  difficult  to  suppose  these  coherent,  consis- 
tent, and  varied  controls  are  merely  phases  of 
the  personality  of  Mrs.  Travers  Smith  or  some 
other  automatist,  than  to  accept  the  conclusion 
to  which  Dr.  Hodgson  was  eventually  driven. 
In  spite  of  the  unquestionable  personation  of 
deceased  individuals  which  is  a  familiar  ex- 
perience among  spiritualists,  so  cautious  and 
critical  an  investigator  as  Mrs.  Henry  Sidg- 
wick  admits  that  through  Mrs.  Piper  and  other 
trustworthy   automatists    "  'veridical'    (truth- 
telling)  communications  are  received,  some  of 
which  there  is  good  reason  to  believe  come 
from  the  dead."    If  this  be  admitted,  the  origin 
of  the  control  as  well  as  of  the  communicator 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

becomes  a  question  of  evidence,  and  of  the 
ultimate  nature  of  our  personality  or  soul. 

On  this  subject  Dr.  W.  McDougall,  F.R.S., 
in  his  masterly  work  Body  and  Mind*  gives  us, 
if  I  may  say  so  without  impertinence,  a  most 
luminous  and  trustworthy  view.  We  must 
admit,  as  Dr.  McDougall  points  out,  "that  the 
soul  is  in  some  sense  a  unitary  being  or  entity, 
distinct  from  all  others. "  The  "unity  of  con- 
sciousness" expresses  our  physical  individu- 
ality, and  our  self-conciousness  is  only  knowrn 
to  us  "as  individual  coherent  streams  of  per- 
sonal consciousness,"  a  fact  which  is  unintel- 
ligible unless  we  postulate  some  other  ground 
for  it  than  that  of  the  bodily  organization,  or 
suppose  that  the  soul  of  man  is  made  up  of  the 
souls  of  lesser  organisms.  But  this  unity  of 
consciousness,  Dr.  McDougall  points  out,  "does 
not  rule  out  the  possibility  that  more  than  one 
psychic  being  may  be  associated  with  one 
bodily  organism.    It  may  be  that  the  soul  that 

*Body  and  Mind,  by  Dr.  W.  McDougall,  F.R.S.,  p.  366. 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

thinks  in  each  of  us  is  but  the  chief  of  a 
hierarchy  of  similar  beings,  and  that  this  one 
alone  is  able  to  actualize  in  any  full  measure 
its  capacities  for  conscious  activity."  Dr. 
McDougall  then  goes  on  to  say  that  "One  may 
see  in  this  possibility  the  explanation  of  those 
strange  and  bizzare  phenomena  which  have 
been  so  zealously  studied  in  recent  years  under 
the  head  of  secondary  or  dual  personality." 

That  well-known  case  of  secondary  person- 
ality, Sally  Beauchamp,  Dr.  McDougall  re- 
gards, not  as  a  mere  division  of  the  normal 
personality,  but  considers  that  the  co-con- 
sciousness shown  in  this  case  was  possibly  a 
distill ct  psychic  being  controlling  the  body  of 
Miss  Beauchamp.  The  more  recent  case  of 
Doris  Fischer  supports  this  view — that  occa- 
sionally the  human  body  may  be  controlled  by 
different  psychic  entities  or  souls.  To  attribute 
these  and  other  cases  of  multiple  personality, 
and  cases  apparently  of  obsession,  to  the  sub- 
liminal  self  of   the  individual   is  using  that 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

hypothesis,  I  venture  to  say,  as  a  mere  cloak 
for  our  ignorance. 

Returning  to  the  different  controls  described 
by  Mrs.  Travers  Smith,  I  am  strongly  disposed 
to  consider  many  of  them  as  distinct  psychic 
entities,  and  not  in  all  cases  mere  phases  of 
the  personality  of  the  automatist.  Doubtless, 
in  some  cases  the  "controls"  are  merely  the 
ephemeral  dream  creations  of  the  automatist, 
and  have  therefore  only  a  fleeting,  and  appar- 
ent, personality  of  their  own;  but  in  other 
cases  they  appear  to  be  distinct  souls,  and  may 
once  have  lived  in  another  body  on  earth,  or 
they  may  be  the  products  of  the  evolution  of 
life  in  the  unseen  universe,  temporarily  pos- 
sessing the  brain  of  the  automatist. 

However,  these  are  mere  speculations,  and 
we  must  await  more  evidence  before  we  can 
arrive  at  any  definite  conclusion,  beyond  the 
need  of  extreme  caution  in  taking  these  "per- 
sonations" at  their  face  value.  The  general 
reader  will  turn  with  greater  interest  to  the 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

evidence  which  Mrs.  Travers  Smith's  experi- 
ments give  of  the  proof  of  survival  after  bodily 
death.  It  is  only  necessary  to  point  out  that 
it  is  imperative,  especially  in  psychical  re- 
search, to  distinguish  between  the  facts  nar- 
rated and  the  inferences  we  may  draw  from 
these  facts.  There  does  undoubtedly  appear  to 
be  good  ground  for  drawing  the  inference  that 
some  of  the  evidence  here  given  strongly  sup- 
ports the  belief  in  survival.  In  this  awful  and 
devastating  war  such  evidence  comes  "as  the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land." 


"My  son,  the  world  is  dark  with  grief  and  graves, 
So  dark  that  men  cry  out  against  the  heavens. 
Who  knows  but  that  the  darkness  is  in  man? 
The  doors  of  Night  may  be  the  gates  of  Life." 


VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 


x       •      •    1 


VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 


CHAPTER  I 
Introductory 

SO  many  valuable  books  have  been  offered 
of  late  to  the  public  on  the  subject  of 
psychic  phenomena  that  I  feel  some  apology 
should  be  made  by  a  totally  unscientific  person 
like  myself  for  adding  to  their  number.  I  have 
not  even  the  excuse  that  I  have  anything  excit- 
ing or  sensational  to  tell ;  I  have  never  attended 
a  seance  for  materialization ;  I  have  never  seen 
a  ghost.  Nearly  all  my  experiences  have  come 
to  me  through  automatism,  and,  such  as  they 
are,  I  venture  to  bring  them  into  the  light  on 


2  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

the  chance  that  they  may  be  interesting  to  the 
student  of  these  matters;  I  can  vouch  for  the 
fact  that  what  I  have  to  tell  is  the  result  of 
patient  research,  at  private  sittings,  chiefly  in 
my  own  house,  and  with  the  help  of  various 
friends,  who  were  as  anxious  as  I  to  add  some- 
thing, however  small,  to  the  vast  mass  of  evi- 
dence which  has  been  accumulated  on  the  sub- 
ject of  survival  after  death. 

I  have  great  faith  in  practical  experiment — 
in  fact,  I  feel  sure  that  those  who  have  actually 
taken  part  in  seances  or  sittings  get  a  view  of 
psychic  phenomena  impossible  to  persons 
whose  investigations  have  been  merely  theo- 
retical. Both  points  of  view  are  of  great 
value;  in  many  ways  the  observer  is  better 
fitted  to  weigh  the  evidence  produced  by  the 
practical  worker  than  is  the  worker,  for  the 
sense  of  another  personality  controlling  the 
automatist  is  apt  to  warp  the  judgment  of  the 
sitter.  Many  things  are  clear  and  evidential 
to  the  practical  experimenter  which  appear 


INTRODUCTORY  3 

vague  to  the  theoretical  student.  My  reason 
for  laying  the  results  of  my  sittings  before  the 
public  is  that  they  are  genuine  as  far  as  they 
go;  they  represent  the  work  of  a  small  circle 
of  people,  all  of  whom  desired  to  get  nearer  to 
the  truth,  and  approached  the  subject  of 
psychical  phenomena  in  a  spirit  unbiased  as 
to  the  source  from  which  such  phenomena 
arise.  What  we  accomplished  may  seem  small, 
but  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  by  the  reader  that 
no  help  from  any  professional  medium  was 
given  in  any  of  the  sittings  for  automatism 
quoted  by  me. 

Those  who  are  willing  to  devote  some  of 
their  time  to  the  study  of  what  is  commonly 
called  "spiritualism"  should  bear  in  mind  that 
results  are  slow,  uncertain,  and  cannot  be 
forced.  Indeed,  one  asks  oneself  whether  time 
is  well  spent  seeking  for  the  few  grains  of  gold 
one  finds  in  the  huge  dust-heaps  of  disappoint- 
ment and  dullness.  The  value  of  these  golden 
grains  seems  immense  when  one  has  wandered 


4  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

about  in  a  Hades  of  dim  trivialities  and  even 
absurdities,  spending  evening  after  evening  re- 
ceiving messages  from  known,  or  unknown, 
persons  of  a  kind  which  would  not  do  credit  to 
a  very  mediocre  letter-writer.  Yet  these  com- 
munications purport  to  be  what  the  unknown 
control  has  an  ardent  desire  to  get  through 
from  the  world  of  mystery  to  those  still  alive! 
Then,  quite  unexpectedly,  a  few  minutes  may 
atone  for  the  hours  of  boredom !  Many  times 
I  have  felt  inclined  to  give  up  this  apparently 
hopeless  pursuit,  elusive  and  baffling  as  it  is. 
I  have  even  persuaded  myself  that  I  might  ven- 
ture to  come  to  a  definite  conclusion  on  the  sub- 
ject, that  each  experiment  made  it  more  obvious 
that  automatism,  at  any  rate,  is  the  sitter's  sub- 
liminal self — neither  more  nor  less.  This  theory 
simplifies  the  whole  problem;  it  sets  aside  the 
most  disturbing  matter  connected  with  things 
psychic,  the  possibility  of  an  external  influ- 
ence, and  one  can  start  from  a  firmer  basis — 
i.e.,  that  we  are  studying  ourselves  under  ab- 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

normal  conditions,  and  not  holding  converse 
with  the  spirits  of  other  human  beings,  alive  or 
dead. 

I  must  confess,  however,  that  having  worked 
more  or  less  steadily  at  automatism  for  six  or 
seven  years,  having  started  with  no  theory  on 
the  subject,  and  having  been  persuaded  by 
turns  that  I  have  found  this  or  that  explana- 
tion of  the  phenomena  which  came  under  my 
notice — I  must  confess,  I  repeat,  that  for  some 
time  past  I  have  been  quite  clear  and  decided 
on  one  point — in  feeling  that  the  subliminal 
self  accounts  for  much  and  many  things,  but 
not  for  everything.  I  am  convinced,  in  fact, 
that  external  influences  of  some  nature  work 
through  us,  using  our  senses,  eyes,  ears,  brains, 
etc.,  their  messages,  however,  being  highly 
colored  by  the  personalities  of  their  mediums. 
I  feel  sure  that  hardly  any  of  the  communica- 
tions I  have  had  are  entirely  due  to  subcon- 
sciousness. What  the  nature  of  these  ex- 
ternal influences  may  be  is  another  and  a  most 


6  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

interesting  question,  and  one  still  more  diffi- 
cult to  answer.  I  cannot  say  I  have  found  any 
satisfactory  reply  to  it  so  far.  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  the  communications  which  reach 
us  come  from  different  sources.  In  a  few  cases 
I  have  felt  almost  certain  that  I  had  spoken  to 
those  I  knew  who  had  passed  over;  they  ap- 
peared to  preserve  their  earth-memory,  and 
continued  to  interest  themselves  in  the  mun- 
dane affairs  of  those  they  loved. 

I  now  pass  on  to  the  kind  of  experiment  in 
which  I  personally  have  had  long  and  interest- 
ing experiences.  This  subject  will  occupy 
much  of  my  little  book,  so  in  this  chapter  I 
only  explain,  for  the  benefit  of  my  less  ex- 
perienced readers,  the  different  methods  of 
communication  so  far  as  I  know  them. 

First  comes  the  game  called  "planchette," 
the  apparatus  for  which  can  be  purchased  in 
any  children's  toy-shop  in  the  "games"  depart- 
ment. I  need  hardly  describe  planchette  to 
any  person  who  troubles  to  read  a  book  on 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

psychical  research.  I  only  say  here  that  plan- 
chette  is  the  clumsiest,  most  primitive,  and  least 
satisfactory  "autoscope"  possible,  and  I  should 
recommend  anyone  who  desires  to  experiment 
in  this  field  of  research  to  avoid  this  particu- 
lar method. 

Next  comes  automatic  writing  and  draw- 
ing. This  mode  of  communication  has  pro- 
duced most  interesting  results  without  doubt, 
but  there  are  objections  to  it.  A  pencil  is  held 
generally  between  the  first  and  third  fingers  of 
the  hand  of  the  medium ;  it  touches  the  paper, 
and  as  a  rule,  after  some  preliminary  flourishes 
and  twirls,  the  pencil  begins  to  write  coherent 
words  and  messages.  These  messages  vary  ac- 
cording to  the  communicator,  and  the  hand- 
writing changes  as  different  personalities  ap- 
pear. Sometimes  the  writing  is  that  of  a  child, 
then  of  an  old  person,  etc.  One  of  my  objec- 
tions is  that  the  script  is  generally  difficult  to 
decipher,  as  (in  the  nature  of  things)  the 
pencil  cannot  be  lifted  as  in  ordinary  handwrit- 


8  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

ing,  and  the  MS.  is  full  of  scrawls  and  hard  to 
read.  This  is  not  my  only  objection  to  auto- 
matic writing,  which,  for  some  unknown  rea- 
son, leads  in  certain  cases  to  continual  pain  in 
the  arm,  an  irresistible  desire  to  write,  nervous 
upset,  and  consequent  physical  prostration. 
However,  without  doubt  most  interesting  and 
evidential  results  have  been  obtained  by  auto- 
matic writing,  and  my  objections  to  this 
method  do  not  hold  good  in  all  cases. 

As  to  automatic  drawing,  this  phenomenon 
seems  very  wonderful  in  the  case  of  persons 
possessing  no  normal  faculty  as  artists.  I  have 
seen  automatic  drawings  executed  by  persons, 
who  in  their  normal  state,  were  without  either 
artistic  taste  or  training,  which  would  do  credit 
to  an  art  student  of  many  years'  standing. 

The  third  method  of  obtaining  automatic 
messages  is  the  one  I  can  speak  of  most  con- 
fidently, as  almost  all  my  work  has  been  accom- 
plished through  this  "autoscope." 

In  his  work  On  the  Threshold  of  the  Unseen, 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

Sir  William  Barrett  suggests  the  term  "auto- 
scope"  for  any  mechanical  means  whereby 
communication  from  the  unknown  may  reach 
us.  The  unknown  may  be  merely  the  medium's 
subconscious  self;  or  it  may  be  some  super- 
normal faculty,  such  as  clairvoyance,  possessed 
by  the  medium;  or  it  may  be  the  influence  of 
some  extraneous  mind,  living  or  dead,  acting 
upon  the  subconsciousness  of  the  medium.  The 
forked  rod  used  by  the  dowser  or  water-finder 
is  an  autoscope,  so  is  planchette,  the  ouija- 
board,  etc.  Although  the  last-named  may  ap- 
pear slow  and  tedious,  it  becomes  rapid  in  the 
hands  of  an  expert  sitter.  Moreover,  as  will 
be  seen  directly,  the  ouija-board  we  use,  and 
which  I  now  proceed  to  describe,  has  many 
advantages. 

The  ouija-board  is  a  table  or  board  on  which 
the  letters  of  the  alphabet  are  printed  or  writ- 
ten. The  automatisms  fingers  rest  on  a  small 
triangular  table  or  "traveler,"  the  underside 
tipped  with  three  pads  of  felt.    This  traveler 


10  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

glides  lightly  over  the  board  and  spells  out 
messages,  darting  rapidly  from  letter  to  letter. 
The  best  ouija-board,  the  one  I  invariably  use 
myself,  is  a  card-table  covered  with  green 
baize,  on  which  the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  the 
numbers  from  o  to  9,  and  the  words  "yes"  and 
"no"  are  laid,  cut  out  separately  on  small  pieces 
of  cardboard;  over  this  is  placed  a  sheet  of 
plate  glass,  the  same  size  as  the  table.  The 
traveler  consists  of  a  small  triangular  piece  of 
wood,  about  half  an  inch  thick,  shod  with  three 
small  pieces  of  carpet  felt  and  having  on  top 
a  piece  of  soft  rubber  material  on  which  the 
fingers  rest.  I  think  experimenters,  who  try 
the  ouija-board,  will,  if  they  have  any  psychic 
power,  soon  be  amazed  at  the  rapidity  with 
which  the  traveler  flies  from  letter  to  letter. 
In  our  own  circle  the  words  come  through  so 
quickly  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  read 
them,  and  it  requires  an  experienced  short- 
hand-writer to  take  them  down  when  the 
traveler  moves  at  its  maximum  speed.    At  the 


INTRODUCTORY  11 

ouija-board  the  co-operation  of  two  autom- 
atists  seems  best;  three  seems  to  create 
confusion. 

Automatism,  practiced  with  patience  and 
perseverance  by  any  of  the  methods  I  have 
mentioned,  presents  very  interesting  phe- 
nomena. By  means  of  it  results  of  many  and 
varied  kinds  may  be  obtained.  During  the  six 
years  in  which  I  have  sat  more  or  less  regularly 
at  the  ouija-board,  I  have  had  many  interesting 
and  evidential  messages  purporting  to  come 
from  those  who  have  passed  over  or  those  who 
were  asleep  or  in  a  state  of  trance.  I  have 
found,  as  I  shall  show  later,  that  for  some  un- 
explained reason  automatism  awakes  in  the 
medium  supernormal  powers  which  he  or  she 
does  not  possess  in  the  normal  state.  Success- 
ful experiments  in  so-called  psychometry  may 
be  made  in  this  way,  and  a  faculty  for  previs- 
ion undoubtedly  showrs  itself  sometimes.  Of 
course,  it  is  an  open  question  whether  these 
powers  are  merely  awakened  in  the  medium,  or 


12  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

whether  an  external  influence  is  at  work,  as  it 
professes  to  be.  It  is,  I  think,  not  advisable 
that  an  experimenter  should  advance  any  posi- 
tive opinion  on  this  subject.  I  am  quite  con- 
vinced that  he  or  she  is  in  a  supernormal  state 
when  sitting,  and  consequently  is  handicapped 
in  criticising  results.  My  own  impression  is 
that  in  most  cases  results  are  not  by  any  means 
due  entirely  to  the  sitters'  subconsciousness, 
but  it  is  a  matter  which  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  prove  one  way  or  the  other. 

It  is  best  I  should  leave  my  readers  to  form 
their  own  opinions  about  the  incidents  which 
follow;  but  for  the  sake  of  convenience,  and 
to  avoid  the  constant  repetition  of  qualifying 
phrases,  I  shall  set  down  occurrences  in  the 
form  in  which  they  came  to  me;  that  is,  I  shall 
assume  that  the  messages  come,  as  they  pur- 
port to  come,  from  intelligences  outside  the 
medium's  subconsciousness,  although  this  is  a 
matter  in  which  I  still  prefer  to  hold  my  per- 
sonal judgment  in  suspense. 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Personality  of  the  Control 

I  HAVE  headed  this  chapter  "The  Person- 
ality of  the  Control,"  and  before  I  proceed 
further  perhaps  it  is  best  that  I  should  define 
the  terms  "control"  and  "communicator. " 

By  "control"  I  mean  an  influence  which 
associates  itself  with  the  medium  and  his  sit- 
tings, and  which  appears  to  act  in  many  cases 
as  organizer  at  the  other  side.  These  controls 
introduce  and  fetch  communicators,  and  fre- 
quently advise  and  help  the  mediums  by  ex- 
plaining how  matters  stand  in  the  Unseen. 
Many  people,  who  have  worked  with  these  con- 
trols, believe  that  they  act  as  amanuenses  or 

13 


14  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

interpreters  between  the  medium  and  the  un- 
seen communicator.  As  far  as  I  can  tell,  this 
has  not  been  proved  to  be  the  case.  I  should 
say,  rather,  that  controls  arrange  the  seance 
and  decide  who  among  those  who  wish  to  speak 
from  the  other  side  shall  communicate.  These 
controls  generally  give  themselves  quaint 
names,  and  sometimes  say  they  have  lived  in 
distant  countries  many  hundreds  of  years  ago. 
This  is  not  always  the  case,  but  it  has  been  so 
with  the  majority  of  those  I  have  come  across. 

By  "communicator"  I  mean  the  influence  in- 
troduced by  the  control,  or  who  comes  without 
the  help  of  a  control,  and  gives  his  personal 
history,  or  states  that  he  is  a  friend  or  relative 
of  someone  present.  Such  communicator  may 
either  have  passed  over  or  merely  be  asleep  or 
drowsy. 

In  the  course  of  sittings  extending  over  six 
or  seven  years  many  influences  have  spoken 
through  our  small  circle.  Of  these  some  were 
obviously   frauds,    and   impersonations    were 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL        15 

frequent.  These  disappointments  are  most 
dispiriting  to  the  novice  in  psychic  experi- 
ments. It  must  always  be  borne  in  mind  that 
in  order  to  attain  to  any  firm  ground  from 
which  one  may  review  one's  work  and  venture 
to  form  a  judgment  as  to  whether  we  are  or  are 
not  in  touch  with  the  spirit  world,  a  mass  of 
evidence  must  be  accumulated.  This,  of  course, 
demands  great  patience  and  perseverance,  and 
the  experimenter  must  judge  for  himself 
whether  the  achieved  results  justify  the  expen- 
diture of  time  and  labor.  If  the  results  are 
important  to  him,  he  must  not  be  discouraged 
by  many  back-slidings,  and  he  must  be  pre- 
pared to  keep  careful  records  of  sittings,  good 
and  bad ;  this  is  essential  when  he  comes  to  the 
summing-up  of  evidence. 

I  propose  to  deal  here  with  the  most  marked 
personalities  among  our  controls,  showing 
how — even  allowing  that  these  entities  are 
merely  subconsciousness,  parts  of  our  men- 
tality which  appear  only  under  abnormal  con- 


16  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

ditions — they  preserve  certain  characteristics 
which  are  so  striking  that  there  is  no  pos- 
sibility of  confusing  one  personality  with 
another. 

I  shall  first  describe  a  control  who  has  been 
of  great  service  to  us  in  experimental  work. 
He  is,  in  fact,  the  only  influence  who  has  aided 
and  abetted  us  in  applying  tests  to  our  experi- 
ments, who  is  willing  and  ready  to  do  so  and 
proud  of  his  powers  in  this  line.  As  a  rule  we 
find  controls  most  unwilling  to  submit  to  tests 
of  any  kind;  indeed,  they  are  as  indignant  at 
such  a  suggestion  as  one  might  expect  a  per- 
son to  be  who  walked  into  a  drawing-room  and 
was  subjected  to  a  personal  examination  by  his 
host.  During  the  winter  of  1914  a  small  circle 
of  sitters — the  Rev.  S.  H.,  Mr.  L.,  and  my- 
self— did  very  regular  work  at  the  ouija-board 
twice  weekly,  and  a  great  deal  of  interesting 
matter  came  through  from  various  controls. 
We  worked  blindfold.  I  can  answer  for  my- 
self, and  I  believe  for  my  fellow-sitters,  that 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL        17 

never  in  the  course  of  all  the  months  we  sat 
together  did  we  see  the  board  while  communi- 
cations were  coming  through,  nor  did  any  of  us 
know  at  the  time  what  these  communications 
were,  as  they  were  recorded  in  silence  by  a 
friend,  who  was  obliged  to  take  them  down  in 
shorthand,  such  was  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  traveler  moved  from  letter  to  letter. 

At  the  second  or  third  sitting  of  the  circle 
referred  to,  Peter  Rooney  made  his  appearance. 
He  stated  that  he  was  an  American  Irishman ; 
that  he  had  had  a  most  undesirable  career  and 
spent  much  of  his  life  in  jail;  that  ten  days 
before  he  communicated  with  us  he  had  thrown 
himself  under  a  tram-car  in  Boston  and  had 
been  killed.  Sir  William  Barrett,  having  made 
careful  inquiries  both  from  the  Governor  of 
the  State  prison  at  Boston,  Mass.,  and  from 
the  Chief  of  Police  in  that  city,  found  Peter 
Rooney's  tale  an  entire  fabrication.  A  certain 
Peter  Rooney  had  fallen  from  a  tram-car  in 
August,    1910,    had    suffered    from    a    scalp 


18  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

wound,  but  was  alive  in  19 14,  as  far  as  could 
be  ascertained. 

On  being  upbraided  by  us  for  assuming  a 
name  and  identity  not  his  own,  Peter  admitted 
that  he  had  no  desire  that  we  should  know  who 
he  was,  and  that  he  had  adopted  this  name  as 
"it  was  as  good  as  any  other.''  He  stated  that 
he  had  been  interested  in  psychical  research  in 
his  lifetime,  and  wished  to  assist  investigations 
of  supernormal  phenomena  now  that  he  had 
"passed  over."  He  refused  absolutely  to  give 
us  any  further  information  about  himself. 

Peter  has  a  burning  desire  to  shine  as  a 
"test"  control ;  he  prefers  us  to  work  blindfold, 
and  he  is  rashly  desirous  to  attempt  experi- 
ments. He  is  most  uncertain  in  results,  but, 
given  a  quiet  room  and  his  own  mediums,  he 
can  do  remarkable  things.  He  is  a  rather 
primitive  creature,  has  very  strong  likes  and 
dislikes,  and  is  very  vain  and  fond  of  a  dis- 
play of  his  powers. 

Early  in  our  sittings  he  explained  that  he 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL        19 

used  various  movements  on  the  board  to  ex- 
press his  feelings — love,  hate,  pleasure,  annoy- 
ance, surprise,  etc.  We  became  quite  familiar 
with  these  movements,  and,  blindfold  as  we 
always  were,  we  quite  realized  Peter's  changes 
of  mood.  Working  under  new  conditions,  a 
strange  sitter,  a  disarranged  alphabet,  etc., 
Peter  begins  by  a  very  careful  examination  of 
the  alphabet ;  he  moves  in  and  out  between  the 
letters  until  he  has  traversed  the  entire  board, 
and  in  case  the  letters  are  not  in  the  usual  order 
he  notes  the  fact  carefully.  He  is  most  sensi- 
tive to  noise;  it  seems  to  disturb  and  annoy 
him.  He  starts  at  the  sound  of  a  clock  strik- 
ing or  any  noise  in  the  street,  and  asks  what  it 
is.  He  is  most  impatient,  and  makes  no  allow- 
ance for  any  hesitation  on  the  part  of  the  per- 
son reading  and  noting  down  his  messages,  ad- 
dressing the  unfortunate  individual  occupied  in 
this  somewhat  difficult  task  as  "Fool!"  if  he 
asks  that  a  word  or  sentence  be  repeated. 
Among  the  experiments  which  proved  sue- 


20  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

cessful  with  Peter,  I  note  a  few  of  the  most 
remarkable.  He  was  asked  on  one  occasion  to 
read  something  in  the  room,  a  sentence  from  a 
book  or  newspaper  of  which  the  sitters  knew 
nothing.  He  selected  a  page  from  a  calendar 
of  twelve  pages ;  the  calendar  was  taken  from 
the  wall  by  one  of  the  recorders;  it  was  turned 
over  at  random,  the  recorder  carefully  avoid- 
ing looking  at  it,  and  also  taking  the  additional 
precaution  of  placing  a  screen  between  it  and 
the  medium,  Mr.  L.,  who  was  already  blind- 
folded securely.  The  exposed  leaf  of  the  cal- 
endar was  then  placed  under  the  glass,  still 
carefully  screened.  It  proved,  when  the  trans- 
script  and  calendar  were  compared,  that  this 
calendar  had  rather  long  quotations  for  each 
month.  The  page  which  was  copied  turned 
out  to  be  an  early  spring  month,  which  had 
been  covered  over  long  before;  the  sitting  was 
in  the  late  winter. 

Peter  read  the  entire  page,  including  the 
long  quotation,  perfectly  correctly.    Of  course, 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL       21 

in  this  case  it  may  be  open  to  question  whether 
Mr.  L.,  in  whose  house  the  calendar  was,  might 
not  have  had  the  quotation  in  his  subconscious 
mind.  I  do  not  think  this  was  probable,  but 
I  quite  admit  that  it  was  possible.  But  even 
then  it  must  be  taken  into  account  that  there 
were  twelve  pages  for  his  "subconsciousness" 
to  choose  from,  and  it  would  be  at  the  best  ex- 
ceedingly good  guessing,  as  well  as  remark- 
able memorizing,  if  this  were  the  explanation 
of  what  occurred. 

Peter  was,  and  is  still,  very  fond  of  tele- 
pathic experiments.  He  used  to  ask  the  people 
present  to  choose  a  number  or  a  letter  or  even 
a  word  unknown  to  the  sitters,  and  to  write  it 
on  a  piece  of  paper,  and  hold  it  under  the  ouija- 
table  out  of  their  range  of  vision.  The 
traveler  would  then  make  a  sudden  dive  over 
to  the  place  where  the  paper  was  held,  examine 
it  most  carefully  by  dipping  over  the  table, 
touching  the  paper  on  which  the  numbers  were 
written,  and  generally  dart  back  to  the  correct 


22  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

letters  or  numbers  on  the  board.  It  must 
always  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  sitters  were 
blindfolded,  and  knew  nothing  of  the  result 
at  the  time.  Peter  is  a  fairly  expert  grapholo- 
gist, and  can  tell  character  by  handwriting  as 
well  as  the  average  professional.  If  a  letter  is 
laid  under  the  glass  the  traveler  goes  over,  ex- 
amines it  carefully,  rubbing  the  glass  above  the 
writing  several  times,  darts  back,  begins  gen- 
erally by  mentioning  the  sex  of  the  writer,  then 
by  degrees  and  with  many  careful  examina- 
tions of  the  writing  gives  a  character-sketch 
which  generally  proves  fairly  correct.  With 
this  experiment  care  is  always  taken,  of  course, 
that  the  handwriting  is  that  of  persons  un- 
known to  the  sitters.  Another  successful  ex- 
periment we  have  tried  with  Peter  is  that  one 
sitter  should  be  blindfolded,  and  that  the  other, 
with  eyes  open,  should  receive  a  short  message 
from  him.  The  message  is  not  read  aloud. 
Conditions  are  then  reversed:  the  sitter  who 
was  blindfolded  has  his  eyes  open;  the  other 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL       23 


V 


sitter  is  blindfolded,  the  letters  of  the  alphabet 
are  mixed,  and  Peter  is  asked  to  repeat  the 
message.  Having  done  so,  both  sitters  are 
blindfolded,  the  letters  are  mixed  again,  and 
Peter,  for  the  third  time,  spells  out  the  same 
message.  The  average  success  of  this  experi- 
ment was  about  90  per  cent. 

I  mention  these  experiments  as  they  serve  to 
illustrate  Peter's  character  as  a  test  control. 
Who  Peter  is  or  was  we  do  not  know,  but  from 
years  of  acquaintance  with  him  on  the  ouija- 
board  he  has  become  a  very  clearly  marked 
personality  to  us.  He  evidently  belongs  to  the 
lower  middle  class ;  is  far  from  polished  in  his 
manners;  has  very  strong  likes  and  dislikes; 
is  a  very  vain  and  rather  capricious  creature, 
rejoicing  in  his  own  importance,  and  very  fond 
of  display;  intelligent,  but  not  in  the  least  in- 
tellectual; very  unwilling  to  admit  other  con- 
trols to  any  sitting  he  takes  part  in — he  is,  in 
fact,  an  amusing  and  rather  inelegant  person, 
and  seems  to  regard  the  ouija-board  as  a  means 


24  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

of  displaying  a  limited  number  of  conjuring 
tricks.  He  is  very  particular  about  the  me- 
diums through  whom  he  communicates,  and 
seems  to  gather  his  power  to  "see  without 
eyes"  from  some  unknown  quality  in  certain 
sitters.  I  have  found  only  a  few  people  with 
whom  he  can  do  blindfold  work;  he  rather 
despises  sittings  with  open  eyes,  and  unless  a 
medium  is  present  who  has  the  quality  neces- 
sary for  blindfold  sitting  he  seldom  comes. 

I  now  pass  on  to  a  control  who  is  an  entire 
contrast  to  Peter  Rooney  in  every  respect. 
This  entity  calls  himself  "Eyen,"  and  says  he 
was  an  Egyptian  priest  who  served  in  the 
temple  of  Isis  in  the  reign  of  Rameses  II.  He 
professes  to  have  been  attracted  to  the  sittings 
at  my  house  by  the  fact  that  I  possess  a  piece 
of  cerecloth  in  which  his  mummy  was  wrapped. 
Eyen  is  not  a  test  control  like  Peter ;  he  cannot 
do  any  ouija-work  with  blindfold  sitters;  he 
avoids  all  experiments  as  quite  beneath  him. 
He  is  extremely  sentimental,  much  inclined  to 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL        25 

flatter  his  mediums,  and  most  untrustworthy  in 
his  statements  and  in  the  controls  he  professes 
to  send  us,  who  generally  prove  to  be  Eyen 
himself  in  fancy  dress.  He  also  is  most  re- 
tentive in  his  hold  of  sittings,  and  anxious  to 
exclude  other  controls.  I  have  known  him  to 
"block  the  telephone,"  as  he  calls  it,  for  a 
month  at  a  time,  and  exclude  any  communica- 
tion except  his  own;  the  only  means  we  have 
found  useful  in  driving  him  away  has  been  to 
hypnotize  both  mediums  and  suggest  that  Eyen 
should  not  be  permitted  to  speak.  This  has 
generally  proved  successful — for  a  time  at 
least;  in  my  own  case  the  driving  out  of  Eyen 
always  produced  a  struggle.  When  the  sug- 
gestion that  he  should  go  has  been  made  to  me, 
when  under  hypnotic  influence,  I  have  been 
considerably  shaken  by  him  in  a  rather  un- 
pleasant way. 

Eyen  interested  me  for  several  reasons;  he 
professed  in  the  beginning  of  our  acquaintance 
to  cultivate  my  psychic  powers  and  those  of 


26  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

my  fellow-sitter.  I  had  repeatedly  tried  auto- 
matic writing  without  success.  One  evening, 
about  three  or  four  months  after  he  appeared, 
Eyen  told  me  he  had  brought  a  spirit-light  for 
me,  and  that  I  was  to  give  mine  to  the  friend 
who  sat  with  me,  who  had  none.  I  asked  how 
this  could  be  done.  The  reply  was  that  Eyen 
would  put  his  hand  on  my  head,  and  I  was  to 
place  my  hand  on  the  head  of  my  friend,  and 
thus  the  lights  would  be  transferred.  I  asked, 
"What  will  the  result  of  gaining  more  light 
be?"  Eyen  replied,  "You  will  gain  psychic 
power — you  will  soon  find  you  can  do  auto- 
matic writing,  and  your  friend  will  perhaps 
draw  automatically."  On  the  particular  night 
I  speak  of  no  further  power  was  developed  in 
myself  or  my  friend,  but  on  the  next  occasion 
on  which  we  sat  Eyen  suggested  that  I  might 
try  to  write.  I  did  so  with  a  completely  suc- 
cessful result ;  automatic  writing  came  through 
quite  easily  to  me.  The  drawing  also  was  suc- 
cessful to  a  certain  extent;  the  subjects  Eyen 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL        27 

permitted  to  come  through  were  very  limited! 
At  first  only  mummies  were  drawn,  and  later 
what  Eyen  called  "Nile  flowers."  These  were 
conventional  in  design  and  somewhat  like  the 
lotus.  At  first  these  results  could  only  be  ob- 
tained when  my  friend  and  I  sat  together; 
after  a  short  time  Eyen  said  that  while  Mr. 
X.'s  influence  was  still  in  my  hand  I  should  be 
able  to  write.  This  I  found  was  the  case,  but 
my  own  strength  must  have  increased,  as  grad- 
ually I  found  I  got  automatic  writing  by  my- 
self without  difficulty.  Eyen  has  proved  a 
fraud  and  a  liar  in  most  ways,  and  he  has  been 
driven  repeatedly  from  the  board  by  us  in  con- 
sequence; but  he  has  a  very  definite  person- 
ality, and  his  smoothness,  flattery,  and  false- 
ness are  part  of  it.  He  is  a  most  sentimental 
person,  full  of  imagination,  and  he  possesses 
decided  powers  in  the  direction  of  fiction. 
More  than  once  he  has  spelt  out  most  sensa- 
tional tales  to  us,  the  plots  of  which  might 
quite  well  be  of  service  to  a  writer  in  search  of 


28  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

melodrama.  He  tells  us  stories  of  life  in 
ancient  Egypt,  and  describes  the  rites  in  which 
he  took  part  in  the  Temple  of  Isis.  He  has 
also  told  us  most  sensational  stories  of  the 
present  day,  and  one  very  striking  Italian  tale 
which  came  through  at  12  a.m.  while  the  clocks 
were  striking  one  New  Year's  Eve. 

The  tale  runs  as  follows: 

Long  ago  in  an  Italian  town  there  lived  a 
most  beautiful  woman.  She  was  much  sought 
after  and  had  many  lovers,  but  she  cared  only 
for  one.  Now,  this  beautiful  woman  was  a 
most  enigmatical  creature,  and  was  possessed 
of  a  strange  smile  that  reminded  one  of  the 
picture  of  Mona  Lisa  by  Leonardo  da  Vinci. 
Her  lovers  made  no  way  with  her.  She  always 
kept  them  at  a  distance. 

She  was  attracted  by  this  particular  man 
because  he  had  never  loved  any  woman;  he 
did  not  seek  her  company  or  friendship  in  any 
way,  and  she  determined  to  conquer  him. 
Long  and  hopelessly  she  strove  to  attract  him, 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL        29 

with  no  success.  But  at  last  she  had  her  wish ; 
he  fell  desperately  in  love  with  her.  Step  by 
step  they  came  nearer  and  nearer  to  each  other, 
until,  at  last,  one  night  he  asked  her  to  give 
him  all  a  woman  can  give  a  man.  She  was 
furious  at  this  insult  to  her  honor,  and  refused 
indignantly,  and  in  a  rage  the  man  put  an  end 
to  her  life.  (When  Eyen  came  to  this  point  I 
asked,  "Is  that  all?  It's  not  a  very  original 
story.") 

"Wait,"  said  Eyen.  "The  murdered  woman 
left  her  lover  something  as  a  revenge  for  her 
death.  She  left  him  the  Mona  Lisa  smile, 
which  had  protected  her  from  men,  so  that  he 
might  be  protected  from  all  women  and  never 
love  again." 

Eyen's  latest  development  is  in  the  role  of 
poet!  He  has  taken  to  writing  verse,  in- 
variably addressed  to  one  of  his  original  medi- 
ums, Mr.  X.  or  myself.  Mr.  X.  has  driven 
him  from  the  board  of  late  years,  and  refused 
to  hold  any  converse  with  him.     The  verses 


30  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

which  Eycn  addressed  to  Mr.  X.  consist  of 
curses,  reproaches,  and  regrets  for  this  insult, 
while  those  addressed  to  me  are  all  suavity  and 
most  flattering  in  tone.  These  verses  came 
through  me,  and  a  friend,  Mr.  W.,  who  "sits" 
here  frequently.  They  are  more  or  less  cor- 
rect as  to  versification,  though  neither  this 
friend  nor  I  are  guilty  either  openly  or  secretly 
of  writing  poetry! 

The  next  control  who  occurs  to  me  calls  him- 
self "Astor."  He  professes  to  be  the  "guide" 
of  an  intimate  friend  of  mine,  Miss  C,  who 
lives  in  my  house.  We  frequently  sit  together, 
and  Astor  appears  invariably  and  opens  the 
seance.  He  controls  Miss  C.'s  hand  most 
powerfully;  all  the  force,  mental  and  physical, 
seems  to  come  through  her,  and  I  add  probably 
a  kind  of  balance  only.  Astor  is,  of  course, 
chiefly  interested  in  Miss  C.'s  concerns,  but 
in  so  far  as  hers  are  connected  with  mine,  he 
is  deeply  interested  in  me  also,  and  often  de- 
votes most  of  his  attention  to  me  at  a  sitting. 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL        31 

He  dives  across  the  table  towards  me,  and 
presses  the  traveler  against  my  arm,  as  if  con- 
tact with  me  gave  him  insight  into  my  mental 
state. 

Astor  is  an  intelligent  creature,  not  given 
much  to  flattery — indeed,  often  very  plain- 
spoken.  His  leading  characteristic  is  that  he 
is  clairvoyant  and  sees  vivid  pictures  of  the 
future.  His  prophecies  are  indefinite  as  to 
time.  He  admits  that  time  cannot  be  measured 
in  his  sphere.  He  has  predicted  some  quite 
unforeseen  events  in  a  most  remarkable  way. 
In  one  case  he  made  what  seemed  a  most  rash 
and  absurd  prophecy  about  a  business  affair 
of  my  own,  at  which  I  laughed,  I  remember, 
but  within  a  week  this  totally  unlikely  event 
came  true.  Astor  is  very  clear  in  his  state- 
ments, does  not  hedge  when  questioned  as 
Eyen  does,  and  holds  on  to  his  predictions 
stoutly,  although  the  course  of  time  may  not 
have  justified  them.  He  always  maintains  that 
they  will  come  true  if  we  have  patience,  and 


32  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

that  he  cannot  measure  time.  He  is  a  much 
more  rational  creature  than  Peter  or  Eyen; 
generally  ready  to  have  his  say,  and  then  to 
allow  others  to  speak,  he  is  grave  and  moderate 
in  tone,  and  allows  no  trifling  on  the  part  of 
his  mediums. 

The  last  control  I  shall  speak  of  here  is  one 
of  my  own  who  is  not  yet  an  intimate  ac- 
quaintance, as  she  came  only  a  few  months 
ago.  She  calls  herself  "Shamar,"  says  she  was 
a  Hindoo,  and  that  she  is  my  spirit  guide,  Eyen 
being  merely  "the  guide  of  my  astral!" 
Shamar  has  undertaken  to  conduct  most  of  my 
sittings  lately;  she  devotes  herself  to  culti- 
vating my  powers  by  sending  me  genuine  com- 
munications. She  says  she  is  very  fond  of 
sending  me  messages  from  living  persons  who 
are  asleep  or  drowsy.  In  these  cases  absolute 
proof  is,  of  course,  possible  sometimes.  Twice 
lately  I  had  conversations  with  friends  who 
stated  they  were  in  a  drowsy  state,  and  the 
information  I  received  through  them  proved 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  CONTROL        33 

true  in  every  respect.  So  far  as  I  know  her, 
Shamar  is  sincere;  she  makes  no  magnificent 
promises,  and  she  has  been  very  faithful  in 
bringing  interesting  communicators.  She  is 
quite  different  from  Peter,  Eyen,  and  As  tor. 
She  has  no  sense  of  humor ;  she  never  indulges 
in  anything  of  an  imaginative  nature;  she 
never  foretells  future  events;  she  comes  and 
offers  to  bring  someone  who  will  interest  me, 
or  if  I  (as  I  seldom  do)  ask  for  any  special 
person  she  will  send  him  if  she  can.  She  does 
not  indulge  in  any  platitudes;  she  is  simple 
and  apparently  truthful;  she  seems  to  believe 
she  has  certain  work  to  do  at  a  sitting,  and 
she  does  it  to  the  best  of  her  ability. 

I  may  add  that  both  Astor  and  Shamar  have 
remarkable  gifts  for  elucidating  the  history  of 
objects  placed  on  the  board.  "Psychometry," 
as  it  is  commonly  called,  is  a  gift  which  both 
controls  possess,  apparently;  but  how  much  of 
this  is  due  to  special  sitters  I  am  unable  to  say. 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Communicator — Evidence  of 
Survival 

I  HAVE  now  arrived  at  the  most  vitally  in- 
teresting question  for  us  all  in  connection 
with  psychical  research.  Have  we  any  evi- 
dence of  the  survival  and  identity  of  those  who 
have  left  the  visible  world?  Is  any  light 
thrown  on  this  great  problem  by  messages  re- 
ceived through  the  medium?  And  from  my 
small  personal  experience  I  can  reply  with  sin- 
cerity I  have  had  some  evidence  which,  if  not 
entirely  convincing,  points  so  strongly  to  the 
fact  that  we  survive  what  is  called  death  that 
it  requires  more  credulity  to  doubt  the  fact 
than  to  believe  it.     But  any  evidence  I  have 

34 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  35 

had  of  the  survival  of  those  who  have  died  is 
slight,  and  part  of  what  has  been  convincing 
to  me  is  not  so  from  a  scientific  point  of  view. 
In  this  chapter  I  shall  review  briefly  my  ex- 
perience with  what  seem  genuine  communi- 
cators. I  shall  give  an  account  first  of  those  I 
think  evidential  from  the  "test"  point  of  view 
and  secondly  some  cases  which,  though  not 
conclusive,  were  most  convincing  from  the 
nature  of  the  messages.  I  leave  my  readers  to 
draw  their  own  conclusions.  If  I  may  venture 
to  advise  persons  who  long  to  speak  once  more 
with  those  they  have  loved,  who  have  vanished 
into  darkness,  I  should  say  it  is  wise  and  sane 
not  to  make  the  attempt.  The  chances  against 
genuine  communication  are  ten  to  one ;  the  dis- 
appointments and  doubts  connected  with  the 
experiment  are  great. 

Personally,  I  would  not  make  any  effort  to 
speak  to  the  beloved  dead  through  automatic 
writing  or  the  ouija-board.  The  evidence  they 
offer  of  their  identity  is  too  ephemeral  and  un- 


36  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

satisfactory;  and  as  I  would  not  undertake 
these  experiments  for  myself,  I  would  not 
willingly  help  others  to  risk  them,  unless  in 
very  exceptional  cases,  when  I  had  fully  ex- 
plained my  own  doubts  on  the  subject  and  had 
undertaken  no  responsibility  that  the  messages 
would  be  genuine.  On  the  other  hand,  if,  in 
the  course  of  sittings  at  the  ouija-table,  dear 
and  familiar  names  have  appeared,  I  have 
patiently  tried  to  discover  whether  they  were 
genuine  or  the  reverse,  and  in  some  cases,  I 
am  bound  to  admit,  I  was  inclined  to  think 
that  they  were  not  impersonations. 

I  fear  the  observations  I  have  just  made 
may  be  very  distasteful  to  many  who  approach 
this  subject  from  the  spiritualist  point  of  view. 
I  cannot  offer  these  people  any  apology  for  my 
attitude.  It  may  be  that  they  receive  genuine 
help  and  comfort  from  their  faith  in  these 
manifestations  from  the  Unseen ;  if  so,  I  only 
trust  that  they  may  continue  to  find  this  com- 
fort and  help.    But  I  do  not  attempt  to  address 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  37 

them.     What  I  have  to  say  will  interest  the 
student  of  psychic  matters  only. 

In  almost  all  cases  where  a  discarnate  spirit 
professes  to  speak  I  ask  for  an  account  of  its 
passing  over.  These  accounts  vary  very  little; 
they  all  retain  the  same  features,  though  some 
are  more  detailed  than  others.  In  all  cases  a 
period  of  darkness  is  described  as  occurring 
almost  immediately  after  death.  This  dark- 
ness appears  to  be  a  penance  or  purgatory  for 
the  soul  left  thus  in  lonely  and  silent  medita- 
tion, and  it  is  evidently  a  period  of  consider- 
able suffering.  Yet  during  this  time  of  dark- 
ness the  spirit  seems  to  be  permitted  to  speak 
to  those  on  earth  if  such  opportunity  be  offered 
to  it.  This  state  does  not  seem  to  last  long, 
not  more  than  a  week  or  ten  days,  so  far  as  I 
can  judge  from  communicators  who  come  re- 
peatedly and  speak  of  their  present  condition. 
They  frequently  say  that  when  light  came, 
someone  was  near  them,  who  led  them  away  to 
the  place  where  their  "work"  was.    What  the 


38  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

nature  of  this  "work"  is,  they  seem  unable 
to  explain.  Many  communicators,  when  de- 
scribing their  "passing,"  appear  to  have  had  a 
vision  of  the  body  before  the  darkness  en- 
veloped them.  Frequently  when  soldiers  killed 
in  battle  have  spoken  they  became  aware  that 
they  had  died.  They  tell  how  the  battlefield 
lay  below  them,  with  all  the  horror  of  its  de- 
tails, and  how  they  saw  their  own  bodies  lying 
on  the  field.  Sometimes  the  vision  extends, 
and  they  see  the  body  being  carried  away  and 
buried.  In  the  same  way,  some  of  those  who 
die  in  their  beds  describe  the  body  lying  there 
as  when  the  spirit  rose  from  it.  They  can 
see  the  nurses  preparing  it  for  burial,  the 
coffin,  etc. 

Beyond  the  period  of  darkness,  I  have  had 
no  clear  or  definite  account  of  the  region  in 
which  the  spirit  dwells  or  the  nature  of  its  oc- 
cupations. Some  sitters  known  to  me,  who 
approach  the  subject  in  a  more  religious  and 
less  experimental  spirit  than  myself,  have  had 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  39 

perfectly  lucid  accounts  of  the  future  state — ■ 
even  the  flowers  and  animals  in  the  sphere  to 
which  the  spirit  is  led  after  the  first  darkness 
is  past  were  described  in  detail.  And  in  the 
communications  received  by  this  circle  the 
meeting  of  those  who  had  been  dear  to  each 
other  on  earth  seemed  assured.  All  was  peace, 
love,  and  tranquillity.  The  only  promise  of  re- 
union I  have  obtained  from  any  communicator 
is  that  those  whose  spirits  are  merged  in  each 
other  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word — souls 
created  at  the  same  moment  (though  perhaps 
sent  on  their  earthly  pilgrimage  at  different 
times) — will  be  merged  in  each  other  in  the 
future  state. 

From  reviewing  hundreds  of  messages  from 
those  who  have  passed  away,  I  gather  that  the 
spirit  retains  its  earth-memory  for  a  time.  The 
time  seems  to  vary  with  the  nature  of  the  indi- 
vidual. The  more  rarefied  and  exalted  the 
soul  during  its  earth-life,  the  shorter  its  span 
of   earth-memory   seems  to  be   after   it  has 


40  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

passed  through  the  barrier.  These  more 
highly  developed  souls  seem  gradually  to  rise 
into  a  region  from  which  it  is  perilous  to  touch 
the  earth  atmosphere,  except  for  a  few  minutes 
at  a  time.  After  this  they  disappear 
altogether.  Quite  lately  I  had  an  instance  of 
this.  The  communicator  was  a  connection  of 
my  own,  a  very  refined,  gentle,  intellectual  per- 
sonality in  his  earth-life.  He  came  to  the 
ouija-board  repeatedly  for  some  time  while  I 
happened  to  be  in  touch  with  his  family,  and 
spoke  in  a  way  which  was  very  evidential  to 
them ;  he  appeared  to  find  it  impossible  to  com- 
municate for  more  than  a  few  minutes  at  a 
time.  Then  there  would  be  a  long  pause,  and 
he  would  come  again.  He  told  us  that  after  a 
time  he  would  be  unable  to  speak.  He  had  died 
very  suddenly,  and  seemed  to  have  passed 
quickly  to  a  state  of  great  peace  and  happi- 
ness, though  he  gave  us  no  account  of  his  sur- 
roundings or  occupations ;  he  said  it  was  for- 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  41 

bidden,  and  would,  in  any  case,  be  incompre- 
hensible to  those  still  alive. 

I  shall  now  give  details  of  two  cases  of  com- 
munications received  by  me  in  conjunction 
with  another  sitter  (different  in  each  case) 
through  the  ouija-board,  which  consisted  of 
facts  absolutely  unknown  to  the  mediums,  and 
which  were  subsequently  verified  in  every  de- 
tail. The  first  of  these  two  cases  came  through 
in  the  winter  of  191 3.  Our  circle — which  I 
have  already  referred  to  in  Chapter  II — con- 
sisted at  that  time  of  three  sitters — Mr.  L.,  the 
Rev.  S.  H.,  and  myself,  and  a  friend  who  acted 
as  amanuensis  and  shorthand-writer.  During 
the  sittings  of  this  circle,  which  continued 
twice  weekly  for  a  year  or  more,  we  had  most 
remarkable  results — the  more  so  because  we 
sat  blindfolded.  I  shall  give  a  fuller  account 
of  these  sittings  in  my  chapter  on  Thought 
Transference.  It  seemed  that  the  really  mar- 
velous power  of  "seeing  without  eyes"  rested 
in  this  instance  largely,  or  perhaps  completely, 


42  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

with  Mr.  L.  After  he  had  left  Dublin  and  the 
circle  was  broken,  the  Rev.  S.  H.  and  I  re- 
peatedly tried  to  get  messages  blindfolded,  but 
without  success.  I  have  succeeded  in  getting 
blindfold  work  through  with  other  mediums, 
but  none  of  them  have  the  rapidity  and  cer- 
tainty possessed  by  Mr.  L. 

The  message  in  question  came  very  slowly — 
quite  unlike  others  we  had  had,  which  were 
spelt  out  so  rapidly  that  our  shorthand-writer 
could  scarcely  put  them  down  quickly  enough. 
It  seemed  that  this  communicator  was  very 
weak.  She  gave  her  name  (I  shall  call  her 
"Alice  Franks").  Her  address  was  a  house 
in  Upper  Norwood,  and  she  told  us  the  name 
and  date  of  the  newspaper  in  which  her  death 
was  announced.  The  message  was  not  a  long 
one;  she  described  her  last  illness,  and  said 
death  had  just  occurred,  and  had  been  a  happy 
release  from  pain.  The  communication  was 
not  in  itself  especially  interesting — many  such 
come  to  a  circle  of  practiced  sitters — the  evi- 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  43 

dence  of  identity  was  what  was  remarkable. 
The  lady  was  absolutely  unknown  to  anyone 
present,  but  on  investigation  every  statement 
made  by  her  at  the  ouija-board  proved  correct. 

Sir  William  Barrett  was  in  a  position  to 
make  a  careful  investigation  of  this  case, 
which  he  kindly  did,  and  learnt  from  the  lady's 
relatives  that  the  information  we  had  received 
was  undoubtedly  genuine,  and  must  have  been 
conveyed  to  us  in  some  supernormal  manner. 

I  give  here  a  portion  of  the  scrip  of  this 
message : 

Mrs.  Travers  Smith,  the  Rev.  S.  H.,  Mr.  L. 
(All  blindfolded.) 

(For  whom  is  this  message?)  Everybody. 
( Spell  your  name. )  Alice  Franks.  (  Can't  you 
work  quicker?)  No.  (Go  on,  please.)  Your 
overbearing  attitude  will  not  make  me  go  any 
faster.  I  lived  and  died  at  .  .  .  Upper  Nor- 
wood. (Did  you  die  recently?)  Yes.  (What 
date?)  .  .  .  I  was  unconscious  for  many  days ; 
I  believe  that  I  passed  over  between  Friday 


44  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

and  yesterday  morning.  (Have  you  anything 
special  to  say?)  My  pain  was  intense,  and  I 
am  still  in  pain.    Good-bye.,, 

A  more  striking  instance  of  evidence  of 
identity  is  one  which  is  quoted  by  Sir  William 
Barrett  in  his  recent  book,  On  the  Threshold 
of  the  Unseen,  the  "pearl  tie-pin  case."  This 
came  through  one  evening  when  my  friend 
Miss  C.  and  I  were  sitting  together.  As  in  the 
case  of  Alice  Franks,  this  message  was  very 
brief,  and  Miss  C.  and  I  attached  no  impor- 
tance to  it  at  the  time.  The  name  of  a  young 
cousin  of  Miss  C.'s  was  spelt  out  on  the  board. 
He  had  recently  been  killed  at  the  front,  and 
he  stated  that  he  had  been  engaged  to  a  girl 
whose  name  and  address  he  gave  in  full,  and 
asked  that  his  mother  should  be  told  that  he 
wished  her  to  give  his  fiancee  his  pearl  tie-pin 
in  memory  of  him.  The  boy  was  only  nineteen 
when  he  was  killed,  and  this  seemed  a  most 
unlikely  story.  Miss  C.  laughed  at  it,  and 
would  not  have  investigated  it  but  that  I  asked 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  45 

her  to  write  to  the  address  given  and  discover 
if  the  person  mentioned  lived  there.  This  let- 
ter was  returned  to  Miss  C.  as  incorrectly  ad- 
dressed, and  wc  dismissed  the  case  as  hopeless. 
Some  time  afterwards  the  young  officer's  rela- 
tives heard  that  he  had  willed  all  his  posses- 
sions to  a  girl  whose  name  was  the  same  as  the 
one  spelt  out  to  us  on  the  ouija-board — though 
the  address  was  different — and  to  whom  he 
had  been  privately  engaged.  This  fact  was  ab- 
solutely unknown  to  his  relatives. 

Now,  these  two  cases,  to  my  thinking,  can 
only  be  explained  in  one  way — an  ardent  desire 
on  the  part  of  some  external  influence  to  com- 
municate with  this  world.  Surely  it  seems 
irrational  to  think  that  these  messages  came 
from  any  source  other  than  the  discarnate 
spirits  of  these  two  persons.  Something  more 
improbable  and  incredible  may  be  suggested  by 
way  of  explanation.  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
what  is  obvious. 

I  give  these  instances  as  being  two  of  the 


46  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

most  evidential  we  have  had  of  survival. 
Others  have  come  to  us  of  a  like  nature,  but 
they  are  few  and  far  between  compared  to 
those  to  which  I  now  pass :  cases  which  do  not 
furnish  definite  proof  of  identity,  but  which 
were  most  convincing  in  their  substance  and  in 
the  manner  they  were  expressed. 

The  first  I  mention  came  from  a  brother  of 
Miss  C.'s,  who  was  killed  in  Gallipoli.  Miss  C. 
did  not  sit  until  some  time  after  his  death,  but 
almost  immediately  after  she  began,  he  came 
with  urgent  messages  for  his  mother.  Mrs.  C. 
had  been  overwhelmed  with  grief  at  the  loss 
of  her  son,  and  even  after  more  than  a  year 
and  a  half  she  was  quite  inconsolable.  Lieu- 
tenant C.  had  been  a  most  pure  and  innocent- 
minded  young  man — a  very  spiritual  person,  in 
fact,  and  these  messages  were  all  of  the  same 
nature,  begging  Miss  C.  to  tell  his  mother  that 
her  grief  was  keeping  back  his  progress  in  the 
new  sphere,  and  that  he  was  unable  to  rise 
until  she  ceased  to  mourn  for  him.    He  de- 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  47 

scribed  himself  as  "caught  in  the  miasma  of 
desire  that  shrouds  the  earth."  Miss  C.  told 
her  mother,  who  made  every  effort  to  be  more 
cheerful  and  forget  her  sorrow,  and  the  last 
time  Miss  C.'s  brother  spoke  to  her  he  seemed 
to  be  getting  free  from  the  fetters  which 
bound  him  to  earth.  He  said  he  did  not  ex- 
pect to  be  able  to  speak  again.  These  messages 
were  very  convincing  to  Miss  C.  Those  urg- 
ing her  to  speak  to  her  mother  came  through 
very  rapidly,  and  gave  her  the  sensation  of  in- 
tense anxiety  and  excitement. 

I  had  a  strange  experience  myself  with  a 
communicator — a  man  who  had  been  a  friend 
of  mine  for  many  years,  and  from  whom  I  had 
been  estranged  for  a  long  time  before  his 
death.  This  man  died  very  suddenly  of  acute 
appendicitis,  and  on  the  evening  of  his  death  I 
happened  to  be  sitting.  A  mutual  friend  of 
his  and  mine,  who  had  passed  over,  communi- 
cated by  the  board,  and  asked  me  whether  I 
knew  that  Mr.  V.  was  dead.    I  said  I  did  not, 


48  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

and  she  suggested  that  I  should  ring  up  the 
private  hospital  where  he  was.  I  did  so,  and 
found  that  he  had  died  about  half  an  hour 
before.  I  returned  to  the  board,  and  the  same 
communicator  told  me  that  he  would  speak  to 
me  at  the  next  sitting.  He  came  the  following 
week  and  for  six  weeks  after,  and  we  could 
get  no  other  communications  through.  He 
seemed  intensely  anxious  to  explain  the  very 
complicated  circumstances  which  had  induced 
me  to  drop  his  acquaintance.  This  he  did  in 
a  way  which,  I  am  bound  to  confess,  I  should 
never  have  thought  of.  At  last  his  persistency 
wearied  us,  and  I  told  him  I  could  not  speak 
to  him  any  more.  He  replied  that  he  would 
not  try  to  come  again,  and  bid  me  farewell 
with  the  remark,  "Love  and  hate  make  life 
a  ride  in  the  dark." 

The  wording  of  these  communications  and 
the  anxiety  this  man  showed  to  explain  very 
strange  circumstances  connected  with  his  life 
left  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that  I  was  speaking 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  49 

directly  to  his  discarnate  spirit;  but  this  is  one 
of  the  cases  that,  from  its  private  nature  and 
also  because  there  was  no  direct  proof  of 
identity  further  than  what  I  have  mentioned, 
could  only  appeal  to  those  who  knew  him  in- 
timately. 

Although  Sir  William  Barrett  has  described 
the  "Hugh  Lane  case"  in  his  latest  book,  I  feel 
my  readers  may  be  interested  to  hear  what  I 
have  to  say  of  it  first  hand.  The  circum- 
stances were  these:  I  knew  Sir  Hugh  Lane 
personally,  and  had  heard  he  had  gone  to 
America  about  a  fortnight  before  the  sinking 
of  the  Litsitania.  I  had  no  idea  why  he  had 
gone  or  how  long  he  intended  to  stay.  About 
five  o'clock  on  the  day  we  heard  of  the  loss  of 
the  Litsitania,  I  saw  posters  on  my  way  home 
saying  "Litsitania  reported  sinking."  I  did 
not  buy  a  paper,  and  had  no  personal  interest 
in  the  sinking  ship,  as  I  knew  of  no  one  on 
board.  Sir  Hugh  Lane's  name  did  not  occur 
to  me,  probably  because  he  had  been  in  Amer- 


50  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

ica  such  a  very  short  time.  A  sitting  was  ar- 
ranged for  8.30  o'clock  that  evening,  and 
before  we  began  I  felt  a  strange  sensation  of 
depression,  so  much  so  that  I  went  up  to  my 
bedroom  and  sat  alone  for  a  short  time.  I 
could  not  have  said  why  this  feeling  got  hold 
of  me;  there  was  no  special  reason  for  it  that 
I  knew  of.  At  8.30  o'clock  I  came  down,  and 
we  began  our  sitting.  The  Rev.  Savell  Hicks 
recorded  in  silence,  while  Mr.  Lennox  Robin- 
son and  I  sat  blindfolded  and  talked  to  each 
other  while  the  message  was  being  spelled  out 
by  our  hands.  After  a  couple  of  minutes  Mr. 
Hicks  said,  "Would  you  like  to  know  who  is 
speaking?  It  is  Sir  Hugh  Lane,  and  he  says 
he  has  been  drowned,  and  was  on  board  the 
Lusitania"  We  were  terribly  shocked — we 
both  knew  Sir  Hugh — and  asked  Mr.  Hicks  to 
read  the  message  to  us.  It  ran  as  follows: 
First  the  name  of  our  usual  control,  Peter; 
then,  "Pray  for  Hugh  Lane."  Then,  on  being 
asked  who  was  speaking,  "I  am  Hugh  Lane; 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  51 

all  is  dark,"  came  through.  At  this  moment  a 
stop-press  edition  of  the  evening  paper  was 
called  in  the  street,  and  Mr.  Robinson  ran 
down  and  bought  one.  When  he  came  up  to 
me  he  pointed  to  the  name  of  Sir  Hugh  Lane 
among  the  passengers.  We  were  both  much 
distressed,  but  continued  our  sitting.  Sir 
Hugh  Lane  described  the  scene  on  board 
the  Lusitania.  Panic,  then  boats  lowered — 
"Women  went  first,"  he  said.  He  stated  that 
he  was  last  in  an  overcrowded  boat,  fell  over, 
and  lost  all  memory  until  he  "saw  a  light"  at 
our  sitting.  He  sent  me  a  message  about  our 
last  meeting  which  was  quite  evidential  so  far 
as  I  could  tell,  and  gave  me  greetings  and 
advice  for  very  intimate  friends  of  his  and 
mine  in  Dublin.  The  number  of  his  cabin  and 
the  name  of  a  fellow-passenger  given  by  him 
were  incorrect,  so  far  as  I  can  discover. 

This  communication  was  very  striking,  but 
what  followed  was  more  evidential  in  my  opin- 
ion.    Sir  Hugh  Lane  continued  to  come,  and 


52  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

at  each  sitting  at  which  he  appeared  he  begged 
us  to  restrain  any  efforts  of  those  who  might 
wish  to  erect  a  memorial  gallery  to  him  in 
Dublin.  This  he  seemed  to  have  a  horror  of. 
At  the  same  time  he  was  most  anxious  that 
we  should  make  every  effort  to  have  the  con- 
ditions of  the  codicil  to  his  will  carried  out. 
He  wishes  his  pictures  to  come  back  to  this 
city,  and  is  much  disturbed  because  the  trus- 
tees of  the  National  Gallery  are  very  justly  re- 
luctant to  restore  them  to  Dublin. 

We  had  a  very  strange  sitting — Mr.  Len- 
nox Robinson  and  I — last  September,  at  which 
Sir  William  Barrett  was  present.  Before  the 
sitting  I  had  said  to  Sir  William  Barrett  that 
I  thought  the  remarks  of  various  people  were 
justified  who  considered  the  "Hugh  Lane 
case"  evidential  to  the  sitters — who  knew  him 
personally — but  not  to  the  outside  public.  After 
a  communication  had  come  through  from  a 
man  who  said  he  died  in  Sheffield,  and  which 
in  some  particulars  proved  to  be  correct — it 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  53 

was  not  possible  to  investigate  them  all — Sir 
Hugh  Lane  came  to  the  board,  seized  Mr.  Rob- 
inson's arm,  as  he  always  does,  and  after  much 
difficulty  in  reading  the  message  we  discovered 
that  he  was  much  annoyed  with  me  because  of 
the  way  I  had  spoken  to  Sir  William  Barrett 
about  his  first  communication  on  the  night 
after  the  Lusitania  sank.  He  was  most  violent 
on  this  occasion,  seizing  Mr.  Robinson's  arm 
and  driving  it  about  so  forcibly  that  the 
traveler  fell  off  the  table  more  than  once. 
Since  then  whenever  we — Mr.  Robinson  and 
I — have  sat  together,  the  same  thing  has  hap- 
pened. Sir  Hugh  has  come  repeatedly,  and 
always  with  the  same  message.  He  begs  that 
we  shall  believe  that  it  was  really  he  who  spoke 
to  us  that  night  when  the  Lusitania  sank.  He 
says  any  future  words  he  speaks  to  us  or  any- 
one else  will  be  discredited  if  we  put  no  faith 
in  the  first  he  spoke  after  he  died. 

The  latest  message  we  have  had  from  Sir 
Hugh  referred  to  the  Lane  Picture  meeting 


54  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

which  was  to  be  held  at  the  Mansion  House, 
Dublin,  on  January  29th,  19 18.  It  came  to 
Mr.  Robinson  and  me  on  January  22nd,  191 8. 
It  ran  as  follows: 

"Hugh  Lane."  (We  said  we  wanted  Peter 
instead,  as  we  wished  to  do  telepathic  experi- 
ments.) "I  will  not  go.  I  want  to  speak,  and 
this  is  my  chance.  I  want  you  to  go  to  that 
meeting  and  tell  them  I  can  still  let  the  world 
know  my  wishes.  Those  pictures  must  be 
secured  for  Dublin;  tell  them  I  cannot  rise  or 
get  rest:  it  tortures  me.  Do  you  believe  me? 
I  am  Hugh  Lane!"  The  last  sentence  was 
spelt  out  very  passionately.  Mr.  Robinson's 
arm  was  seized  furiously. 

These  communications  from  Sir  Hugh  Lane 
are  very  evidential  and  convincing  to  us  who 
knew  him;  to  the  scientific  observer  I  do  not 
think  there  is  anything  which  could  be  called 
a  genuine  proof  of  identity,  although  certainly 
one  fact  was  mentioned  entirely  outside  our 
subconsciousness — i.e.,  that  Sir  Hugh  was  oa 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  55 

board  the  lost  ship.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  this  was  spelt  out  before  we  bought  the 
stop-press  with  a  list  of  the  passengers.  I  am 
bound  to  confess  that  the  fact  that  the  com- 
municator was  so  excitable  on  and  after  the 
sitting  in  September  did  more  to  persuade  Mr. 
Robinson  and  me  that  it  was  really  Sir  Hugh 
than  the  whole  Lusitania  message.  I  have  little 
or  no  doubt  that  the  influence  which  came  was 
actually  Sir  Hugh  Lane,  but  I  do  not  ask  my 
skeptical  readers  who  have  not  felt  the  tre- 
mendous energy  of  this  communicator  to  share 
my  belief. 

It  seems  to  me  that  it  is  very  difficult  for 
persons  who  are  not  practical  workers  to 
criticise  these  very  intricate  psychical  phe- 
nomena. The  outside  public  is  first  thrilled  by 
the  supernatural  nature  of  a  communication 
such  as  Sir  Hugh  Lane's  on  the  night  after 
the  shipwreck ;  then  comes  the  very  natural  re- 
action towards  doubt,  unless  the  absolute 
identity  of  the  spirit  is  proved.     I  find,  when 


56  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

I  begin  to  criticise  the  experiences  of  other 
people,  that  this  doubt  increases  until  it  seems 
almost  impossible  that  there  is  a  fragment  of 
proof  of  survival  in  most  of  the  messages 
which  appear  very  convincing  to  sitters.  From 
long  experience,  however,  I  know  that  it  is 
best  to  suspend  judgment  in  matters  of  this 
kind  until  one  has  had  ample  time  to  consider 
the  circumstances. 

Let  us,  for  a  moment,  consider  this  case  of 
Sir  Hugh  Lane  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
convinced  spiritualist;  let  us  allow  that  the 
spirit  of  the  drowned  man  made  a  supreme 
effort,  and  succeeded  in  speaking  to  us;  let  us 
endeavor  to  analyze  his  position. 

The  communication  came  through  only  a 
few  hours  after  the  sinking  of  the  Liisitania. 
There  had  without  doubt  been  a  period  of  in- 
tense excitement  and  anxiety  for  Sir  Hugh 
while  he  was  still  alive ;  then  a  period  of  uncon- 
sciousness, let  us  hope,  and  then  the  slow 
awakening  to  find  "all  was  dark,"  and  that  he 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  57 

was  no  longer  in  this  world.  Did  he  speak  to 
us  as  if  in  a  dream?  Was  he  fully  conscious? 
Did  he  communicate  directly  or  through  a  con- 
trol ?  Who  can  tell  ?  Living  persons  who  have 
passed  through  intense  nervous  excitement  are 
generally  dazed;  their  memories  are  confused 
and  their  statements  are  frequently  far  from 
accurate.  If  we  questioned  them  at  such  a  mo- 
ment about  the  past,  we  should  probably  have 
very  hazy  and  distracted  replies  to  our  ques- 
tions. Take  the  case,  so  fresh  in  the  minds  of 
many  at  the  present  time,  of  persons  who  have 
just  escaped  the  perils  of  a  severe  air-raid  and 
have  been  close  to  the  danger  zone.  How 
many  of  such  persons  could  give  small  details 
a  few  hours  afterwards  of  the  circumstances  in 
which  they  were  placed — the  number  of  the 
house  they  rushed  into,  etc.  ?  When  we  analyze 
the  messages  of  those  who  have  gone  suddenly 
through  the  gates  of  death,  are  we  not  some- 
what unreasonable  if  we  expect  them  to  stand 
a  cross-examination  as  though  they  stood  in  a 


58  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

law  court?  If  their  answers  to  our  questions 
are  vague  and  unsatisfying,  let  us  remember 
that  we  are  speaking  normally  of  earthly 
affairs  with  our  earth-memories  strong  and 
fresh,  and  that  our  communicators,  difficulties 
are  unknown  and  probably  incomprehensible 
to  us.  I  feel  that  if  we  interest  ourselves  at 
all  in  such  messages  from  the  dead,  we  should 
extend  our  sympathy  to  the  spirit;  we  should 
invariably  assume  at  sittings  that  communi- 
cators are  genuine.  How  can  we  hope  to  ar- 
rive at  any  fair  conclusion  if  we  judge  super- 
normal circumstances  by  those  that  are 
familiar  to  us,  without  making  any  allowance 
for  the  fact  that  our  difficulties  are  probably  as 
nothing  compared  to  those  at  the  other  side? 
Many  persons  appear  to  think  that  when  we 
die  we  become  possessed  at  the  moment  of 
supernatural  powers.  In  fact,  they  believe 
that  "we  shall  be  changed"  means  far  more 
than  that  we  lose  the  body.  I  do  not  think 
there  is  any  indication  from  any  source  that 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  59 

when  we  wake  again  we  shall  have  suddenly 
acquired  powers  other  than  those  we  possessed 
in  the  earth-life. 

The  spirit  of  Sir  Hugh  Lane,  after  regain- 
ing consciousness  and  memory,  found  in  some 
mysterious  way  that  it  was  possible  to  send  a 
message  back  to  the  earth  through  us.  We 
had  been  friends  of  his,  though  not  very  inti- 
mate with  him.  In  the  dazed  and  confused 
state  in  which  he  was,  he  grasped  at  anything 
which  would  identify  him  in  our  memories. 
"Pray  for  Hugh  Lane"  came,  he  said,  from 
the  control  who  permitted  him  to  speak.  We, 
very  naturally,  asked  him  questions  which 
would  admit  of  concrete  proof — the  number 
of  his  cabin,  etc. — and  his  replies  were,  I  be- 
lieve, incorrect ;  they  came  slowly,  I  remember, 
as  if  it  was  an  effort  to  try  to  recall  these  de- 
tails. What  he  seemed  ardently  to  desire  was 
that  we  should  give  messages  to  very  close 
friends  of  his  in  Dublin,  to  let  them  know  he 
had  not  suffered.     He  hardly  mentioned  his 


60  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

pictures,  which  were  the  great  interest  of  his 
life;  his  state  of  mind  can  hardly  have  been 
clear  and  calm.  Allowance  should  be  made 
for  all  this  by  those  who  criticise  the  message 
in  cold  blood.  I  hold  no  brief  for  the  identity 
of  Sir  Hugh  Lane  on  this  occasion;  I  merely 
take  the  case  as  an  example.  I  am  almost  con- 
vinced it  was  he  who  spoke  to  us  at  this  and 
at  many  other  sittings,  but  I  do  not  ask  my 
readers  to  believe  me  on  the  slender  evidence 
I  give  them.  I  ask  them,  before  making  up 
their  minds  that  such  communications  are  true 
or  false,  to  analyze  them  and  weigh  and  bal- 
ance the  situation. 

Before  I  finish  this  chapter  I  wish  to  draw 
attention  to  a  point  which  is  a  very  interesting 
one  in  my  opinion.  Why  should  any  influ- 
ence— control  or  communicator — be  attracted 
to  the  seance-room?  What  draws  his  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  a  sitting  is  taking  place? 
This  is  a  question  I  almost  invariably  put  to 
controls  and  communicators,  and  their  replies 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  61 

to  the  question  are  almost  always  the  same. 
They  state  that  a  bright  light  attracted  them — 
and  the  stronger  the  medium,  the  brighter  the 
light.  When  I  am  sitting  myself,  and  ask, 
"What  attracted  you  to  this  room?"  the  an- 
swer generally  is,  "I  saw  a  woman  wrapped  in 
flame."  Sometimes  they  describe  a  brilliant 
light  on  the  head  of  the  medium,  but  as  psychic 
strength  increases  the  light  seems  to  envelop 
the  whole  body  of  the  sensitive.  This  light  or 
flame  appears  to  be  pale — "a  clear  white  fire," 
which  seems  to  grow  more  vivid  as  the  medium 
becomes  more  in  touch  with  the  "spirit  world." 
I  often  ask  the  communicator  when  several 
persons  are  present,  "How  many  people  can 
you  see  in  this  room?"  Generally  the  reply  is, 
"I  can  only  see  you."  But  if  any  particularly 
sensitive  person  is  there,  the  traveler  moves 
towards  him,  and,  having  apparently  had  a 
good  look  at  him,  says  he  can  see  him  dimly, 
as  if  in  a  mist.  Voices  other  than  the  me- 
dium's seem  difficult  to  hear.    A  question  is  sel- 


62  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

dom  replied  to  unless  asked  by  one  of  the 

sitters. 

I  have  observed  that  controls,  when  in  doubt 
about  some  fact  concerning  one  of  the  sitters 
or  anyone  else  present  involved  in  the  message 
which  is  being  spelt  out,  dart  across  towards 
the  person  in  question,  and  make  obvious 
efforts  to  get  into  personal  contact  with  him 
or  her.  The  traveler  waits  opposite  the  indi- 
vidual whose  ideas  it  desires  to  analyze,  and 
presses  against  his  arm,  or  is  obviously  glad 
if  his  hand  is  laid  for  a  moment  on  the  in- 
dicator. 

Another  interesting  point  is  the  association 
of  the  controls  with  certain  communicators. 
Each  control  seems  to  have  his  or  her  private 
circle  of  acquaintances  to  draw  from,  and  if 
you  can  "tell  a  man  by  his  friends/'  you  can 
do  so  in  the  case  of  controls.  Sir  Hugh  Lane 
never  comes  through  any  control  but  Peter 
Rooney,  who  professes  to  "keep  the  unseen 
barrier  that  is  supposed  to  separate  this  world 


THE  COMMUNICATOR  63 

from  the  other  sphere,"  and  who  admitted  Sir 
Hugh  in  the  first  instance.  Eyen's  communi- 
cators are  most  untrustworthy,  and  generally 
parade  fantastically  in  fancy  costumes  of  an 
improbable  kind,  whereas  Shamar's  circle  is 
an  interesting  one.  She  is  careful  to  send  peo- 
ple who  are  worth  talking  to,  and  takes  some 
time  to  find  them. 

A  curious  fact,  perhaps  worth  mentioning, 
is  that  I  find  when  a  pause  comes  while  the 
control  is  seeking  a  communicator,  or  when 
the  traveler  is  at  rest  for  any  reason,  quite 
foolish  and  irrelevant  little  messages  are  liable 
to  be  spelt  out.  These  are  the  silliest  things, 
and  suggest  that  spirits  of  the  "poltergeist" 
type  are  playing  with  the  traveler.  I  have  also 
sometimes  observed  a  struggle  at  the  board. 
This  is  conveyed  to  the  mediums  by  a  very 
broken  communication  and  very  spasmodic  and 
violent  movements  on  the  part  of  the  traveler. 
We  are  generally  told  when  this  happens  that 


64  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

one  entity  has  had  a  struggle  with  another  to 
gain  access  to  the  sitting. 

In  the  chapter  which  follows  I  shall  speak 
of  telepathy  and  thought  transference  and  its 
connection  with  automatism,  which  is  one  of 
the  most  interesting  subjects  in  the  range  of 
psychic  study. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Telepathy  and  Automatism 

f  I  TELEPATHY  or  thought  transference  is 
■■•  to  my  mind  the  most  interesting  of  all 
psychic  studies.  When  we  have  convinced 
ourselves  by  simple  experiments  that  thought 
can  be  transmitted  from  one  brain  to  another 
without  speech,  even  when  the  agent  and  per- 
cipient are  separated  from  each  other  by  a 
considerable  distance,  we  are  in  a  better  posi- 
tion to  criticise  and  understand  much  that 
comes  through  by  automatic  methods.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  ultra-skeptical  person  seems  to 
me  to  be  too  completely  dazzled  by  thought- 
transference  results.  Telepathy  accounts  for 
so  much  that  one  is  inclined  to  believe  it  ac- 

65 


66  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

counts  for  everything,  or  at  least  divides  the 
field  with  the  subliminal  self.  Much  as  has 
been  done  by  telepathy  and  the  subliminal 
theory  in  throwing  light  on  psychic  matters,  I 
believe  that  in  the  case  of  certain  people  their 
range  of  vision  has  been  narrowed  by  too  close 
a  study  of  these  two  subjects,  and  it  has  there- 
fore been  more  difficult  for  them  to  take  a  fair 
view  of  the  evidence  before  them. 

The  first  point  for  those  who  propose  to  ex- 
periment in  thought  transference  is  to  discover 
who  can  transmit  and  who  receive.  These 
two  qualities  seldom  go  together,  and  the  only 
method  by  which  the  agent  and  the  percipient 
can  be  discovered  is  by  a  series  of  experiments, 
most  of  which  are  likely  to  be  unsuccessful. 
When,  however,  the  conclusion  has  been  ar- 
rived at  as  to  which  experimenter  is  likely  to 
transmit  and  which  receive,  a  step  in  advance 
has  been  made.  The  simplest  tests  of  thought 
transference  are  the  best  to  begin  with.  Two 
operators  sitting  in  the  same  room  quitely  de- 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         67 

cide  what  the  agent  shall  concentrate  on — a 
card,  a  number  or  letter  written  on  a  sheet  of 
paper,  or  a  person  known  to  both  of  them.  I 
have  tried  some  of  these  simple  experiments 
very  successfully  with  Mr.  X.,  who  has  re- 
markable power  as  a  transmitter:  the  propor- 
tion of  successful  experiments  of  this  kind  was 
about  seven  unsuccessful  against  ten  success- 
ful. In  almost  every  case  in  which  Mr.  X. 
touched  my  hand  I  got  the  right  letter  or  num- 
ber immediately,  but  we  usually  avoided  con- 
tact. On  one  occasion,  in  the  case  of  his 
choosing  persons  we  both  knew,  two  out  of 
three  experiments  of  this  kind  succeeded  very 
rapidly.  In  the  first  case  I  got  the  name  of 
the  person  chosen  most  vividly.  I  saw  the 
name  "William"  written  very  distinctly,  and 
asked  at  once  if  that  was  correct.  In  the  sec- 
ond case,  almost  immediately  after  I  attempted 
to  "receive,"  the  face  of  a  mutual  friend  of 
ours  came  before  me  perfectly  distinctly,  as  if 
it  was  a  framed  portrait.     This  picture  came 


68  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

almost  at  once,  like  a  flash.  I  find  invariably 
that  if  the  thought  is  not  transmitted  at  once 
it  is  useless  to  make  an  effort  to  receive  it;  I 
find  precisely  the  same  result  with  automatic 
experiments  in  which  a  control  acts  as  receiver. 
Experiments  carried  on  when  the  agent  and 
percipient  are  separated  from  each  other  by 
a  long  distance  are  often  very  fairly  success- 
ful, I  believe,  but  I  have  no  personal  experi- 
ence of  them. 

I  have  seen  more  of  telepathy  in  connection 
with  automatism  than  as  practiced  in  the  class 
of  experiment  I  have  mentioned.  I  believe 
from  long  observation  of  many  sensitives  that 
automatism  of  any  kind  produces  an  abnormal 
condition  in  the  sitter;  I  imagine  under  these 
abnormal  conditions  various  qualities  come  to 
the  surface  which  are  dormant  in  the  normal 
state.  I  think  that  clairvoyance  may  appear 
in  a  person  (who  shows  none  of  that  power 
otherwise)  when  at  the  ouija-board  or  when 
doing  automatic  writing,  and  I  believe  that 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         69 

telepathic  powers  are  developed  under  the 
same  circumstances.  I  think  further  that,  if 
the  atmosphere  is  full  of  some  important  pub- 
lic event  unknown  to  the  sensitive,  it  may  reach 
him  through  automatism. 

I  had  a  striking  instance  of  this  in  my  own 
circle.  One  evening  Miss  D.  and  I  sat  at  the 
ouija-board,  and  to  our  surprise  no  results 
whatever  came  through.  This  was  most  an- 
noying, as  we  generally  had  most  interesting 
sittings.  We  had  given  it  up  in  despair,  and 
Miss  D.  was  about  to  go  home,  wThen  I  asked 
her  to  try  once  more  for  a  few  minutes.  We 
sat  down  and  the  following  message  was  spelt 
out  immediately  and  very  rapidly:  "Ship 
sinking;  all  hands  lost.  William  East  over- 
board. Women  and  children  weeping  and 
wailing — sorrow,  sorrow,  sorrow."  We  had 
no  idea  what  the  message  meant.  No  more 
came  through.  Just  then  I  heard  a  "stop- 
press"  being  called  in  the  street,  and,  wonder- 
ing what  could  have  happened,  I  ran  down  and 


70  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

bought  a  paper.  The  news  was  that  the 
Titanic  had  gone  down.  I  believe  that  the 
name  "William  East"  was  incorrect — we  had 
no  one  present  to  follow  the  message,  which 
came  very  rapidly  and  excitedly — I  believe  the 
name  must  have  been  "William  Stead."  For 
from  that  day  forth  and  for  weeks  after  he 
came  persistently  to  the  ouija-board,  telling  us 
about  his  death  and  begging  to  be  allowed  to 
materialize,  that  we  might  be  sure  it  was  really 
he.  Whether  telepathy  would  account  for  the 
first  Hugh  Lane  communication  I  am  not  sure; 
I  am  much  more  inclined  to  believe  that  it  was 
really  Sir  Hugh  who  spoke  to  us. 

Mr.  X.  and  I  have  had  some  very  interesting 
sittings  with  Mr.  E.,  who  seems  to  have  re- 
markable power  as  a  transmitter.  He  is  not  in 
the  least  mediumistic;  his  presence  at  a  sitting 
leads  to  most  curious  telepathic  results.  Mr. 
E.  has  lived  abroad  a  great  deal,  chiefly  in 
South  Africa,  and  has  many  stories  of  adven- 
ture to  relate  of  a  striking  kind.    On  two  occa- 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         71 

sions  he  sat  with  us,  no  other  person  being 
present.  He  did  not  touch  the  board  either 
time.  His  "spirit  guide''  professed  to  come  to 
us,  and  he  questioned  her  as  to  whether  she 
could  give  him  any  information  about  certain 
persons  of  whom  Mr.  X.  and  I  had  never 
heard.  On  these  two  evenings  amazing  tales 
were  spelt  out  by  Mr.  E.'s  guide,  all  the  par- 
ticulars of  which — so  far  as  he  could  verify 
them — were  correct.  One  of  these  tales  con- 
cerned a  man  whose  death  had  been  very  mys- 
terious. He  had  been  found  drowned  in  a  lake, 
and  it  was  never  known  whether  he  had  com- 
mitted suicide  or  whether  it  was  a  case  of 
murder.  This  man  described  circumstances 
before  the  night  of  his  death  which  Mr.  X. 
and  I  were,  of  course,  quite  unaware  of,  and 
which  Mr.  E.  says  were  accurate.  He  then  ex- 
plained how  his  death  occurred,  and  described 
his  mental  state  beforehand.  The  other  tale, 
which  was  long  and  circumstantial,  was  also 


72  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

correct  in  every  detail,  with  added  informa- 
tion, new  to  Mr.  E. 

Now,  these  cases  may  be  taken  in  two  ways. 
Either  Mr.  X.  (or  more  probably  I  myself,  as 
I  am  a  better  recipient)  caught  these  reflec- 
tions from  the  mind  of  Mr.  E.,  and  subcon- 
sciously added  suitable  endings  to  both  tales, 
or — as  I  must  confess  I  think  more  probable — 
the  communicators  were  the  persons  they  pro- 
fessed to  be.  In  any  case  I  think  Mr.  E/s 
presence  influenced  our  sittings,  and  these 
stories,  drawn  directly  from  his  mind  without 
contact  with  the  autoscope,  may  take  their 
place  fittingly  in  a  chapter  on  thought  trans- 
ference. 

Another  interesting  instance  of  the  same 
kind  occurred  one  evening  when  Miss  C.  and  I 
were  the  sitters,  Mr.  Y.  being  present.  The 
control  described  an  old  castle  which  had  just 
been  bought  by  Mr.  Y.,  and  told  him  the  place 
was  haunted.  The  hauntings,  as  described  by 
the  control,  involved  in  their  explanation  a 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         73 

romantic  story  of  old  times.  At  last  I  said  to 
Mr.  Y.,  "Do  you  think  we  should  let  this  com- 
munication wander  on  like  this  ?  Does  it  inter- 
est you?"  He  replied,  "Very  much.  This  is 
the  plot  of  my  new  play."  Miss  C.  and  I  knew 
nothing  whatever  of  the  work  Mr.  Y.  was  en- 
gaged on  just  then. 

Another  development  of  telepathy  with  the 
ouija-board  is  the  transmission  of  messages 
from  living  persons  who  are  asleep.  My 
Hindoo  control,  Shamar,  is  very  fond  of  send- 
ing these  to  us,  and  lately  two  or  three  came 
through  which  I  have  verified.  I  was  in  Lon- 
don in  December,  191 7,  and  spent  Christmas 
with  a  relative  at  South  Kensington.  On  De- 
cember 26th  my  cousin  and  I  had  a  short  sit- 
ting, rather  late  at  night,  about  10.30  or  11 
o'clock.  Shamar  came,  and  promised  us  some- 
thing interesting.  The  name  of  my  cousin's 
brother  was  spelt  out  on  the  board;  he  de- 
scribed in  what  room  he  was  sitting,  and  said 
he  was  asleep  before  the  fire.     The  message 


74  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

was  a  short  one,  and  I  have  not  the  record  of 
it  by  me,  but  it  was  proved  correct  in  every 
detail. 

After  this  the  name  of  Mr.  D. — an  intimate 
personal  friend  of  mine — appeared.  He  stated 
that  he  was  not  sound  asleep,  and  therefore  the 
message  would  come  in  jerks,  which  it  did. 
He  said  he  was  sitting  before  the  fire  in  his 
drawing-room;  no  one  else  was  in  the  room. 
I  asked  him  to  give  my  sister  a  message  from 
me;  he  said,  "Sorry,  I  can't;  I  shall  forget  all 
this  when  I  wake."  He  then  went  on  to  tell 
me  what  had  happened  on  Christmas  night — ■ 
quite  a  long  communication — and  mentioned  a 
friend  of  his  and  mine  who  had  come  in,  and 
whom  I  certainly  should  not  have  expected 
would  be  there.  He  then  said  good-bye,  and 
that  he  could  not  speak  any  more,  as  he  was 
getting  more  wakeful.  This  was  an  absolutely 
correct  statement  of  facts,  as  I  found  out  when 
I  came  back  to  Dublin. 

Now,  I  leave  it  to  my  readers  to  decide 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         75 

whether  these  last  cases  should  or  should  not 
be  included  under  "telepathy."  Did  Mr.  D.'s 
spirit  escape  from  his  body  and  speak  to  me, 
or  did  I  get  in  touch  with  him  in  some  mysteri- 
ous way  and  read  his  mind  ?  I  do  not  attempt 
to  answer  the  question. 

The  last  instance  of  Shamar's  powers  in 
this  way  occurred  only  two  nights  before  I 
write  this.  I  sat  for  a  very  few  minutes,  at 
her  request.  I  had  been  sitting  earlier,  and 
she  asked  me  to  sit  again  late,  as  she  wanted 
to  try  an  experiment,  at  about  12.30  o'clock 
a.m.  She  sent  a  friend  of  mine,  who  said  he 
was  asleep.  He  gave  me  a  short  message  ex- 
plaining a  circumstance  which  had  been  rather 
puzzling  to  me  in  a  manner  I  had  never 
thought  of.  I  attached  little  or  no  importance 
to  this,  but  next  morning  I  received  a  letter 
from  this  friend,  explaining  the  same  matter  ex- 
actly as  he  did  at  the  ouija-board  on  the  occa- 
sion I  have  mentioned.  These  communications 
during  sleep  seem  to  me  to  offer  a  very  inter- 


76  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

esting  problem  to  the  investigator.  I  hope  to 
make  further  attempts  of  the  kind  with 
Shamar's  aid. 

During  the  sittings  which  I  alluded  to  in  an- 
other chapter,  in  which  the  circle  consisted  of 
the  Rev.  S.  H.,  Mr.  L.,  and  myself,  wre  made 
various  interesting  telepathic  experiments. 
Perhaps,  as  these  sittings  were  carried  on 
under  unusual  conditions  (I  mean  that  few 
circles,  so  far  as  I  know,  succeeded  in  getting 
"blindfold"  results  at  the  ouija-board)  I  may 
as  well  describe  them  here.  The  very  remark- 
able mediumistic  powers  of  Mr.  L.  were  dis- 
covered in  this  way.  A  circle  of  seven  or 
eight  people  used  to  meet  at  my  house  once  a 
week.  We  had  two  boards  in  the  same  room 
at  that  time,  which  I  found  was  quite  a  mistake, 
One  evening  the  Rev.  S.  H.  brought  a  gentle- 
man with  him,  who  was  quite  unknown  to  me, 
and  asked  me  to  sit  with  him.  Mr.  L.  had 
never  done  much  psychic  work  before.  He 
and  I  tried  to  get  results  in  the  usual  way,  with 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         77 

open  eyes,  but  though  the  traveler  moved  a 
good  deal,  no  word  or  sentence  was  spelt. 
After  a  short  time  the  Rev.  S.  H.,  who  had 
often  attempted  blindfold  work  with  me  with 
no  success,  suggested  that  Mr.  L.  and  I  should 
try  the  experiment.  I  laughed,  and  said  it  was 
hardly  likely  that  we  should  succeed,  consider- 
ing we  had  not  got  one  coherent  sentence  or 
even  a  word  with  open  eyes.  However,  we 
were  both  blindfolded,  and  almost  immediately 
messages  began  to  come  through,  to  our 
amazement.  That  night  we  had  three  short 
but  quite  coherent  messages.  We  then  decided 
to  sit  regularly;  the  Rev.  S.  H.  joined  us,  and 
Mr.  W.,  who  was  an  expert  shorthand-writer, 
kindly  undertook  to  read  the  board  and  record 
for  us.  We  arranged  that  he  should  do  this 
silently,  so  that  none  of  us  sitters  should  know 
what  was  spelt  out.  Wre  chatted  to  each  other, 
and  often  when  we  were  laughing  Mr.  W. 
would  tell  us  something  very  tragic  was  com- 
ing through.     These  sittings  continued  for  a 


78  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

year  or  more,  twice  weekly;  we  never  had  an 
evening  without  ample  and  generally  interest- 
ing results.  The  method  of  blindfolding  was 
as  follows :  A  close  black  satin  mask  was  fitted 
for  each  sitter;  no  glimpse  of  the  board  could 
be  had  through  these  unless  the  head  was  tilted 
far  back.  We  did  not  consider  these  masks 
sufficient  for  "test"  conditions,  however,  so 
when  visitors  were  present  we  wore  outside 
our  masks  opaque  veils  of  black  cotton  ma- 
terial extending  from  the  forehead  to  the 
waist,  which  greatly  added  to  our  discomfort. 
During  these  sittings  we  had  a  most  remark- 
able prophecy  about  the  Balkan  War  which 
had  just  broken  out.  We  had  long  messages  in 
French  and  German,  and  we  did  many  inter- 
esting experiments,  some  of  which  I  have  de- 
scribed in  Chapter  II.  Early  in  the  course  of 
these  sittings  Peter  Rooney  appeared,  and  as- 
sisted us  in  every  way.  He  was  most  amusing 
in  the  manner  in  which  he  reproved  us  if  we 
missed  a  sitting,  declaring  he  had  wasted  his 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         79 

time  waiting  for  us,  and  grumbling  steadily  for 
the  first  quarter  of  an  hour.  Peter  Rooney 
has  undoubted  telepathic  power  as  a  receiver. 
He  seems  sometimes  to  require  a  human  mind 
to  work  through,  and  sometimes  he  can  do 
without,  which  is  strange.  One  of  the  cases 
in  which  he  was  able  to  read  something  un- 
known to  any  sitter  present  was  when  he  spelt 
out  the  sheet  of  the  calendar  which  I  described 
in  Chapter  II,  and  in  that  instance  it  is  just 
possible,  though  very  unlikely,  that  Mr.  L.  may 
have  had  a  "picture"  of  the  sheet  in  his  sub- 
conscious mind.  Other  times,  when  letters, 
words,  numbers,  or  colors  were  placed  under 
the  glass,  they  were  generally  known  to  at  least 
one  person  present.  I  remember  on  one  occa- 
sion when  the  Rev.  S.  H.  was  observing,  Mr. 
L.  and  I  being  the  sitters,  the  Rev.  S.  H.  wrote 
a  number  on  a  scrap  of  paper  and  asked  Peter 
to  read  it  from  his  mind  (he  did  not  lay  it 
on  the  board).  Peter  paused,  then  gave  3, 
which  was  wrong — the  number  was  5.     The 


80  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

Rev.  S.  H.  told  him  he  was  mistaken;  Peter 
then  asked  the  Rev.  S.  H.  to  touch  Mr.  L.'s 
hand,  and  when  he  did  so  spelt  out  5  immedi- 
ately. Another  way  in  which  we  tested  Peter's 
powers  of  thought  transference  was  by  the  ob- 
server taking  a  scrap  of  colored  paper  at  ran- 
dom from  a  box  and  laying  it  on  the  board 
without  seeing  it.  In  the  case  when  I  was 
sitting  this  invariably  succeeded.  Peter  touched 
the  color  with  the  traveler,  and  spelt  it  out  cor- 
rectly without  apparent  difficulty.  What 
seemed  curious  was  that  another  lady  sat  with 
Mr.  L.  and  the  Rev.  S.  H.  several  times  at  my 
house,  and  although  the  fact  of  her  taking  my 
place  made  no  difference  whatever  otherwise, 
Peter,  could  do  no  "color-reading"  with  her. 

Another  case  in  which  Peter  failed  to  work 
without  a  transmitter  occurred  at  Sir  William 
Barrett's  house  at  Kingstown  one  evening 
when  Dr.  MacDougall  of  Oxford  was  present. 
I  had  arranged  that  in  my  absence  one  of  my 
maids  should  disarrange  my  drawing-room  in 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         81 

some  way  unknown  to  me ;  that  she  should  de- 
cide beforehand  what  she  would  do,  write  it 
down,  and  give  it  to  me  to  take  to  the  sitting 
in  a  sealed  envelope.  I  hoped  that  Peter  would 
go  to  my  house — which  was  six  miles  away — 
and  bring  me  an  account  of  what  my  maid  had 
done  to  the  room,  which  could  be  verified  by 
my  opening  the  envelope.  This  experiment 
was  a  total  failure.  Peter  went  off  to  my 
house  obediently  when  we  told  him  what  was 
wanting,  and  for  full  three-quarters  of  an  hour 
the  traveler  never  moved.  When  at  last  he 
came  back  he  was  indignant,  and  asked  how 
we  could  have  given  him  all  this  trouble  when 
there  were  no  human  eyes  to  see  through.  It 
was  one  of  the  experiences  which  fully  con- 
vinced us  that  our  own  will,  desire,  and  inten- 
tion had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  the  results 
obtained. 

Our  telepathic  experiments  with  Peter  had 
exactly  the  same  results  as  those  carried  on 
between  two  living  human  beings.     Peter  is 


82  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

evidently  very  receptive  of  thought,  and  usu- 
ally requires  a  transmitter  whose  mind  he 
can  read. 

After  this  circle  had  broken  up  and  these 
first  sittings  had  come  to  an  end  (Mr.  L.  left 
Dublin  soon  after),  the  Rev.  S.  H.  and  I  were 
sure  he  and  I  should  get  blindfold  experiments 
through.  We  were  mistaken,  however;  for 
months  we  tried  patiently  evening  after  even- 
ing with  no  results  whatever,  blindfold  or 
otherwise!  We  both  seemed  to  have  lost  all 
power  to  do  automatic  work  of  any  kind. 

One  evening  about  seven  or  eight  months 
after  Mr.  L.  had  gone  away,  Mr.  X.  and  an- 
other friend  were  at  my  house,  and  it  occurred 
to  me  that  we  might  try  the  ouija-board  as  a 
mild  amusement.  Mr.  W.  and  I  tried  first, 
with  little  or  no  success ;  then  Mr.  X.  sat  with 
me,  and  the  traveler  flew  about  and  spelt  out 
messages  in  great  style.  Since  then  (four  or 
five  years  ago)  Mr.  X.  and  I  have  sat  con- 
stantly, and  Peter  has  come  to  us  and  helped 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         83 

us  to  get  blindfold  work  through.  The  results 
were  not  so  sure  as  those  which  came  through 
with  Mr.  L.,  but  Peter  has  done  test  work  for 
us,  telepathic  experiments,  etc.  I  find  that  in 
these  experiments  the  particular  sitter  natur- 
ally makes  an  immense  difference.  If  Mr.  Y. 
is  present  at  a  sitting  and  he  concentrates  on  a 
card,  number,  or  letter,  or  even  a  word,  the 
proportion  of  successful  results  is  very  large 
compared  to  those  achieved  through  other  sit- 
ters. Mr.  Y.  is  not  a  sitter  himself,  but  he  has 
a  very  remarkable  influence  on  a  seance,  and 
undoubtedly  he  has  great  power  of  conveying 
thought  to  controls.  The  mere  fact  that  he  has 
glanced  at  the  word  or  number  to  be  conveyed 
seems  to  make  it  clear  to  Peter. 

Before  I  close  this  chapter  perhaps  I  should 
say  a  few  words  about  telepathy  during  hyp- 
notic trance.  Of  this  I  have  only  slight  experi- 
ence, and  I  shall  not  go  outside  what  has  come 
under  my  personal  notice.  The  Rev.  S.  H.  is 
an  expert  hypnotist,  and  he  has  frequently 


84  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

hypnotized  Mr.  X.  and  me  and  other  friends 
of  mine.  We  found  that  ouija-work,  blindfold 
and  otherwise,  could  be  accomplished  under 
these  trance  conditions,  though  the  messages 
were  spelt  out  slowly  and  nothing  of  special 
interest  came  through.  Lately  we  had  the  fol- 
lowing results  in  thought  transference,  etc., 
under  hypnotism.  The  subjects  were  Mr.  X. 
and  myself,  and  I  do  not  think  we  had  got 
beyond  an  early  stage  of  trance  in  any  instance. 
On  one  of  these  occasions  the  Rev.  S.  H. 
tried  to  convey  "taste"  to  Mr.  X.  He  did  so 
in  this  way:  Having  got  his  subject  into  a 
sufficiently  drowsy  condition,  which  took  about 
five  minutes,  the  Rev.  S.  H.  tasted  first  salt, 
then  sugar,  cayenne  pepper,  vinegar,  and 
lastly  ginger.  In  each  case  after  tasting  he 
took  Mr.  X/s  hand,  and  suggested  that  he  was 
tasting  something,  and  asked  what  it  was.  In 
every  case  but  one  Mr.  X.  recognized  immedi- 
ately what  was  in  the  Rev.  S.  H.'s  mouth  at 
the  time,  smacking  his  lips  when  the  sugar's 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM        85 

turn  came!  The  ginger  was  the  only  case  not 
perfectly  successful.  Mr.  X.  thought  it  was 
cloves,  but  by  that  time  the  Rev.  S.  H.  had 
tasted  so  many  condiments  that  it  might  well 
have  been  difficult  to  catch  the  exact  flavor  of 
this  last  one! 

At  another  sitting,  the  Rev.  S.  H.,  having 
hypnotized  Mr.  X.  and  me,  tried  the  following 
experiments  with  us :  He  held  any  object  picked 
up  at  random  in  the  room  in  one  hand,  while 
with  the  other  he  took  the  hand  of  Mr.  X., 
concentrated  his  own  thought  on  the  object, 
and  asked  what  it  was.  The  first  object  chosen 
was  a  fountain-pen.  Mr.  X.  almost  immedi- 
ately described  the  object  as  "long,  black,  and 
thin/'  but  couldn't  say  exactly  what  it  was. 
The  second  chosen  was  a  penny.  Mr.  X.  de- 
scribed it  as  "rather  small,  flat,  and  round/' 
but  did  not  see  anything  further.  The  third, 
a  roll  of  paper,  was  a  complete  failure;  it  pro- 
duced no  impression  whatever. 

Similar  experiments  were  then  tried  with 


86  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

myself  as  the  subject.  The  first  object  at- 
tempted was  a  round  crystal.  I  saw  some- 
thing round  and  luminous  which  seemed  full 
of  reflections,  and  which  appeared  to  retreat 
from  my  eyes,  become  tiny,  and  then  enlarge 
again.  I  could  not  say  what  it  was.  The  sec- 
ond object  was  an  ordinary  briar- wood  pipe. 
After  a  minute  or  two  I  knew  that  whatever 
it  was  it  had  two  dark  colors,  was  not  lumin- 
ous, and  was  oval  in  shape.  I  got  no  more 
than  this.  The  pipe  was  dark-brown  wood 
with  a  black  mouth-piece,  and  had  an  oval 
bowl,  which  the  Rev.  S.  H.  held  in  his  hand. 
I  did  not  visualize  the  stem  of  the  pipe,  which 
his  hand  did  not  touch. 

Further  experiments  done  the  same  evening 
were  as  follows:  While  still  hypnotized,  Mr. 
X.  and  I  were  put  sitting  at  the  ouija-board, 
our  hands  on  the  traveler.  When  we  touched 
it,  it  began,  as  usual,  to  move  rapidly.  The 
Rev.  S.  H.  suggested  forcibly  that  no  control 
should  come.     He  then  concentrated  his  mind 


TELEPATHY  AND  AUTOMATISM         87 

on  the  word  "butter,"  and  very  slowly  and 
with  much  fumbling,  I  believe,  the  word  was 
distinctly  spelt  out  on  the  board. 

The  next  experiment,  in  which  the  Rev.  S. 
H.  concentrated  on  one  letter  on  the  board, 
pointing  to  it  with  his  finger  while  he  held  a 
hand  of  one  or  other  sitter,  failed  with  both 
of  us.  The  Rev.  S.  H.  suggested  that  it  was 
very  difficult  to  concentrate  satisfactorily  on 
a  single  letter  when  the  whole  alphabet  was 
spread  before  him. 

The  last  of  these  little  experiments  was  that 
the  Rev.  S.  H.  held  one  of  my  hands,  the  other 
being  on  the  traveler.  My  control,  Shamar, 
spelt  out  her  name.  The  Rev.  S.  H.  asked  her 
whether  if  he  held  an  object  under  the  table 
she  could  tell  him  what  it  was.  She  said  she 
would  try.  He  held  a  match-box  underneath 
the  table.  The  traveler  moved  over  to  the  edge 
of  the  table  where  it  was  tilted  over,  touching 
it  lightly,  and  slowly  spelt  out  "paper."  The 
Rev.  S.  H.  said,  "So  far  right,  but  describe  it 


88  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

further."     Having  had  another  look  at  it, 
Shamar  spelt  out  "box"  and  then  "match." 

I  describe  these  experiments  as  Mr.  D.,  who 
was  recording  them  at  the  time,  took  them 
down,  as  I  myself  was  in  a  state  of  hypnotic 
sleep.  From  my  own  experience,  I  consider 
that  no  field  of  psychic  study  offers  more  in- 
teresting possibilities  than  telepathy,  and  es- 
pecially so  when  practiced  through  autom- 
atism with  the  control.  In  some  of  the  cases 
I  mention  no  conclusion  seemed  possible,  other 
than  that  an  external  and  intelligent  influence 
was  at  work  in  co-operation  with  us.  In  the 
case  of  these  latter  experiments  we  are,  how- 
ever, not  dealing  with  a  possible  external  entity 
but  are  face  to  face  with  the,  as  yet,  almost 
unexplained  possibilities  and  mysteries  of  the 
subconscious  mind,  whose  abysmal  depths 
afford  a  fascinating  field  for  investigation  to 
those  who  are  not  directly  interested  in  the  sub- 
ject of  survival  after  death. 


CHAPTER  V 
"Prevision" 

HAD  I  not  decided  that  this  would  be  purely 
a  record  of  my  personal  experiences,  I 
should  make  an  attempt  to  speak  of  "clair- 
voyance" in  the  full  sense  of  the  word,  but  my 
space  is  limited,  and  what  may  be  called  "pre- 
vision" is  the  only  kind  of  clairvoyance  with 
which  I  have  come  into  touch  and  of  which 
I  have  had  first-hand  evidence.  Prevision  is, 
I  think,  an  inexplicable  faculty,  but  it  is  a 
power  which  some  persons  undeniably  possess, 
and,  allowing  that  an  external  agent  is  at  work, 
in  automatic  experiments  one  meets  certain 
controls  who  also  possess  the  marvelous  quality 
of  looking  into  the  future. 


90  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

I  think,  I  may  say  I  believe,  that  a  living 
person,  through  what  I  can  best  describe  as 
his  "atmosphere,"  attracts  or  repels  certain  in- 
dividuals as  that  atmosphere  may  be  sym- 
pathetic or  antipathetic  to  them,  and  thus  the 
clairvoyant,  who  is  supersensitive,  may  be  en- 
abled to  reach  farther  than  the  average  indi- 
vidual, and  enter  for  the  moment  into  the 
associations  and  memory  of  a  person  whose 
atmosphere  is  sympathetic  to  him.  In  the 
frequent  instances  in  which  a  clairvoyant, 
perfectly  successful  with  one  person,  fails 
totally  with  another,  I  think  this  is  the  explana- 
tion. An  antipathetic  atmosphere  must  make 
it  almost  impossible  for  the  sensitive  to  grasp 
the  past,  present,  and  future  of  an  individual 
psychically  out  of  touch  with  him.  One  real- 
izes this  when  one  considers  how  apparently 
unreasonable  one's  likes  and  dislikes  to  certain 
people  are,  which  I  account  for  in  the  same 
way. 

With  regard  to  prevision,  while  it  is  com- 


"PREVISION"  91 

paratively  easy  to  explain  how  the  sensitive  can 
describe  past  and  present  situations  by  saying 
that  the  subject  may  convey  these  impressions 
telepathically  to  the  clairvoyant,  in  the  case  of 
prevision  of  future  events  no  such  explana- 
tion— so  far  as  we  are  aware — can  be  offered. 
We  may  carry  about  with  us  the  more  impor- 
tant future  events  of  our  lives,  and  if  so,  we 
may  be  able  to  transmit  them  subconsciously 
to  the  sensitive.  But  who  has  had  any  proof 
of  this?  I  am  unable  to  entertain  any  doubt 
whatever  that  certain  persons  possess  the 
power  of  prevision,  more  especially  when  they 
attempt  to  foretell  the  future  to  a  really  sym- 
pathetic subject.  I  have  had  some  amazing  in- 
stances of  this  in  my  own  experience.  If  free- 
will has  no  existence  at  all,  and  if  events  are 
predetermined  from  birth  to  death,  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  we  carry  the  future  as  well  as  the 
past  and  present  with  us ;  but  allowing  that  we 
are  in  any  way  agents  in  determining  our  own 
fate,  how  does  the  clairvoyant  foretell  our  des- 


92  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

tiny,  which  is  as  yet  undetermined?  Of 
course,  when  we  use  the  term  "prevision"  we 
must  bear  in  mind  that  there  are  many  degrees 
of  that  power.  In  some  cases  only  a  glimpse 
of  the  future  a  very  short  way  ahead  is  per- 
mitted, and  in  cases  of  this  kind  the  view  is 
very  narrow  and  restricted;  the  clairvoyant 
gets  on  one  line,  as  it  were,  and  sees  nothing 
beyond  or  beside  it.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
my  own  experience,  I  have  had  my  past  and 
present  pictured  most  accurately  and  my 
future  for  four  years  ahead,  and  this  reading 
included  the  most  unlikely  and  important 
events.  A  point  which  is  interesting  is  that, 
unless  in  exceptional  cases,  the  "fortune-teller" 
seldom  foresees  great  public  events,  such  as 
the  War.  This,  again,  substantiates  my  con- 
tention that  the  personal  atmosphere  is  the 
window  by  which  the  clairvoyant  is  permitted 
to  gaze  into  the  future. 

To  illustrate  what  I  speak  of  I  shall  give 
three  cases  of  prevision  or  prophecy,  all  of 


"PREVISION"  93 

which  concerned  myself,  and  which  demon- 
strate three  entirely  different  degrees  of  this 
power.  The  first  of  these  "readings  of  the 
future"  was  a  most  remarkable  one.  Mrs.  S., 
the  lady  I  mentioned  before  in  connection  with 
my  letter  to  Miss  C,  was  the  sensitive.  I 
visited  this  lady  in  June,  1914.  She  knew 
nothing  whatever  about  me,  not  even  my  name, 
and  she  did  not  even  recognize  the  fact  that  I 
am  Irish  by  birth.  She  persisted  that  I  was 
American!  Mrs.  S.  did  not  focus  her  clair- 
voyant power  by  cards,  crystal,  or  any  of  the 
usual  methods,  nor  did  she  look  at  my  hand 
or  even  hold  it.  She  merely  sat  opposite  me 
and  told  me  the  most  astonishing  things !  She 
recognized  immediately  that  I  had  done  psychic 
work,  and  said  that  fact  helped  her.  She  de- 
scribed my  past  for  fifteen  years  back,  my  pres- 
ent position,  and  the  future  for  four  years 
ahead,  a  prediction  which  seemed  so  preposter- 
ous that,  though  I  took  down  what  she  said,  I 
could  not  let  such  improbabilities  weigh  on  my 


94  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

mind.  And  yet  she  made  no  mistake  in  any 
particular. 

The  circumstances  were  as  follows:  In  De- 
cember, 19 1 3,  we  had  moved  into  a  new  house, 
and  spent  a  great  deal  on  fitting  it  up,  etc.  As 
my  husband  was  a  physician,  practicing  in 
Dublin,  he  and  I  considered  we  had  settled 
down  for  practically  the  rest  of  our  lives  there. 
Mrs.  S.  prophesied  that  two  years  after  I  saw 
her  I  should  leave  this  house,  and  that  my  hus- 
band would  go  away  from  me.  She  could  not 
tell  why,  but  he  would  "drop  out  of  my  life," 
she  said.  "Yet  he  would  not  die."  All  she 
prophesied  has  come  true,  and  the  War — 
which  she  did  not  foresee — accounts  for  what 
has  occurred. 

The  next  case  I  shall  mention  here  was  one 
of  an  entirely  different  nature. 

Miss  M.  has  remarkable  mediumistic  power 
in  many  different  directions ;  she  can  do  psy- 
chometry,  has  a  great  sense  of  the  influence  of 


"PREVISION"  95 

locality,  and  is  decidedly  clairvoyant,  though 
in  a  different  manner  from  Mrs.  S. 

In  October,  191 6,  Miss  M.  looked  into  a 
crystal  for  me,  and  described  a  scene  which  she 
thought  was  symbolic.  She  saw  a  tent  in  a 
desert-place — wild,  dark  figures  crouching 
round,  and  told  me  this  scene  meant  that  some- 
one very  dear  to  me  was  in  the  tent  and  would 
be  in  great  danger  from  these  wild,  dark  peo- 
ple. I  could  not  place  what  she  saw.  My  son 
was  in  India  at  the  time,  but  his  regiment  had 
no  prospect  of  active  service,  and  I  did  not 
connect  him  with  the  scene  in  the  crystal.  In 
January  and  February,  191 7,  however,  a  dis- 
turbance on  the  Afghan  frontier  broke  out, 
and  my  son's  regiment  was  ordered  off  to  a 
desert  region,  where  there  was  severe  skirm- 
ishing for  some  time.  What  called  my  atten- 
tion to  the  crystal  scene  was  a  letter  written 
by  him  while  in  this  desert-place,  in  which  he 
described  his  tent  and  the  district  in  which  he 
was  in  a  way  which  immediately  recalled  the 


96  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

crystal  picture  to  my  mind.  Now,  I  give  this 
case  as  an  entire  contrast  to  the  power  of  pre- 
cognition possessed  by  Mrs.  S.  She  saw  the 
future  for  years  ahead  for  me  most  accurately ; 
while  in  Miss  M/s  case  only  one  small  event 
was  pictured,  though  this  one  scene  was  very 
vivid  and  distinct.  I  have  found  Miss  M.'s 
power  for  reading  future  events  follows  on 
one  line  at  a  time.  She  gets  a  glimpse  of  the 
future,  and  a  very  accurate  one;  but  once  an 
incident  seizes  her,  she  will  get  it  again  and 
again,  and  nothing  else. 

The  last  instance  of  prevision  I  shall  give 
was  a  very  striking  one,  and  of  a  very  differ- 
ent nature  from  those  I  have  already  spoken  of. 

Mrs.  M.,  a  remarkable  trance  medium,  not 
professional,  came  to  my  house  once  or  twice 
for  seances.  On  one  of  these  occasions  the 
circle  present  sat  round  a  table,  holding  hands, 
until  Mrs.  M.  dropped  the  hands  she  was  hold- 
ing (she  was  not  under  control,  apparently) 
stared  at  me,  and  said :  "I  see  a  tall  lily  stand- 


"PREVISION"  97 

ing  in  front  of  you.  Someone  near  and  dear 
to  you  is  going  to  die."  I  said :  "You  may  be 
mistaken;  it  may  be  myself. "  Mrs.  M.  said: 
"No;  it  is  someone  very  near  to  you,  perhaps 
your  father  or  mother.  It  is  close;  the  lily  is 
bowing  towards  you.  It  will  be  in  a  very  short 
time  and  sudden."  I  attached  very  little  im- 
portance to  this  incident,  being  of  a  skeptical 
turn  of  mind.  That  day  month,  however,  my 
father  died  very  suddenly.  Now,  this  was  a 
very  clear  and  distinct  case  of  prevision,  as  it 
happened  that  this  was  not  in  my  subconscious 
mind;  there  was  no  indication  that  my  father 
was  especially  ill  until  within  half  an  hour  of 
his  death. 

So  much  for  clairvoyance  from  the  sensi- 
tive. I  now  venture  to  speak  of  a  much  more 
difficult  matter — clairvoyance  and  prevision  in 
connection  with  the  control  as  it  occurs  in 
automatism.  Here  the  question  arises,  From 
what  source  does  this  power  come?  If  we  allow 
the  agency  of  an  external  influence  or  control, 


98  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

is  the  control  clairvoyant?  Or  if  we  discard 
the  possibility  of  any  external  influence,  how 
can  the  phenomena  be  accounted  for?  Does 
the  sitter  become  clairvoyant  under  abnormal 
conditions  while  using  the  autoscope? 

I  cannot  reply  to  any  of  these  questions  with 
any  confidence,  but  as  I  have  said  before  that, 
from  my  personal  experiments,  I  am  inclined 
to  believe  that  there  is  an  external  influence  at 
work,  I  am  still  further  inclined  to  believe  that 
in  the  case  of  some  controls  (as  in  the  case  of 
living  human  beings)  we  meet  one  occasionally 
who  has  the  power  of  reading  future  events. 
But  I  feel  it  would  be  most  presumptuous  in 
anyone  with  my  limited  experience  to  attempt 
more  than  the  putting  of  the  slight  evidence  I 
possess  before  my  readers. 

The  first  cases  I  had  of  prevision  through  the 
ouija-board  concerned  the  very  sudden  death 
of  my  father  in  April,  191 3,  of  which  I  have 
just  spoken.  Looking  up  old  records  of  sit- 
tings which  took  place  in  the  winter  of  191 2 


"PREVISION"  99 

and  the  early  months  of  191 3,  I  find  that  three 
or  four  near  relatives  who  had  passed  over 
came  repeatedly,  and  in  every  case  gave  the 
same  message :  that  my  father  was  much  more 
seriously  ill  than  the  doctors  supposed,  and 
that  he  would  die  suddenly  of  angina.  These 
little  messages  were  depressing,  certainly ;  but, 
though  my  father  had  been  suffering  from  in- 
somnia and  was  not  in  good  health,  there  was 
nothing  to  indicate  heart  trouble,  and  we  at- 
tached no  importance  to  them.  And  yet  they 
proved  to  be  perfectly  correct.  There  was 
nothing  especially  evidential,  so  far  as  I  re- 
member, as  to  these  relatives  being  the  persons 
they  professed  to  be.  In  this  case  I  do  not  con- 
sider, however,  their  identity  was  a  question  of 
much  importance.  The  point  that  is  interest- 
ing is  whether  some  external  influence,  pos- 
sessed of  clairvoyant  power,  conveyed  a  very 
clear  and  direct  prophecy  to  me — a  prophecy 
the  details  of  which  were  certainly  not  in 
my  subconscious  mind — or  whether  a  latent 


100  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

prophetical  power  was   developed  in  myself 
under  abnormal  conditions. 

Another  case  of  prevision  from  the  ouija- 
board  was  the  following:  In  August,  191 6,  I 
was  in  a  very  remote  part  of  County  Kerry. 
One  afternoon  I  received  letters  from  Dublin 
concerning  the  sale  of  my  house,  which  I  was 
trying  to  dispose  of  under  rather  hopeless  con- 
ditions at  the  time.    These  letters  decided  me 
to  hurry  up  to  Dublin  next  morning,  and  that 
evening,  before  going  to  bed,  Miss  C.  and  I 
had  a  little  sitting.    Astor,  Miss  C/s  control, 
whom   I   have   mentioned   before   as   having 
prophetical  powers,  came  and  told  me  that  I 
was  right  to  travel  up  to  town,  that  the  ar- 
rangement I  hoped  to  make  about  the  sale  of 
my  house  would  not  come  off,  but  that  within  a 
week  I  should  find  a  new  purchaser  and  dispose 
of  the  house  to  far  better  advantage.     This 
seemed  a  most  improbable  forecast  of  future 
events  at  the  moment,  as  I  had  spent  some 
months  in  fruitless  efforts  to  get  rid  of  the 


"PREVISION"  101 

house,  and  everything  was  against  me  in  Au- 
gust, when  few  people  were  in  town.  Astor, 
however,  was  right.  The  arrangement  I  ex- 
pected to  complete  failed,  and  quite  unex- 
pectedly a  new  and  better  purchaser  appeared 
within  the  week,  and  the  bargain  was  con- 
cluded. 

Astor  has  prophesied  most  stirring  events 
lately  for  Miss  C.  and  me,  and  so  far,  five  of 
these  predictions  have  come  true.  A  year  ago 
Astor  was  most  persistent  about  a  play  in 
which  Miss  C.  was  much  interested,  and 
which  he  said  wculd  be  performed  in  London. 
This  seemed  more  than  improbable  at  the  time 
(Astor  says  he  is  unable  to  calculate,  within 
a  year  or  so,  when  an  event  will  occur,  and 
could  not  tell  us  when  we  should  hear  about  the 
production),  and  now  in  the  most  unexpected 
way  this  play  has  been  "put  on"  in  London. 

I  leave  it  to  my  readers  to  suggest  an  ex- 
planation of  these  cases  of  prevision  through 
automatism.     Is   Astor   clairvoyant?     Or  if 


102  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

Astor  is  merely  Miss  C.'s  subconsciousness,  do 
she  and  I  become  clairvoyant  under  abnormal 
conditions  ?  Or  shall  we  put  these  readings  of 
future  events  down  to  coincidence?  I  do  not 
venture  to  make  any  definite  reply  to  these 
questions. 

The  instances  of  prevision  which  I  have 
given  in  this  chapter  may  seem  trivial  to  the 
reader,  but  I  make  no  apology  for  them.  They 
may  not  be  striking,  but  they  go  with  all  the 
other  evidence  we  heap  together  to  help  to  con- 
vince the  world  that  if  progress  is  to  be  made 
in  the  study  of  the  Unseen,  it  must  be  slow  to 
reject  what  seem  improbabilities  at  a  first 
glance. 

The  most  useful  work  the  student  of  psychi- 
cal research  can  do  is  to  accumulate  results 
good  or  bad;  no  sitting,  however  trivial,  should 
go  unrecorded.  When  possible,  no  case  which 
might  prove  identity  should  remain  uninvesti- 
gated. No  psychic  phenomena,  however  im- 
probable, such  as  chiromancy,  etc.,  should  be 


"PREVISION"  103 

despised.  The  smaller  and  rather  tiresome  ex- 
periments in  telepathy  should  not  be  neglected. 
It  is  by  the  sifting  of  mountains  of  such  evi- 
dence that  we  advance  towards  a  clearer  under- 
standing of  what  is  now  called  the  "super- 
natural," but  what  may  some  day  be  considered 
"natural"  if  we  continue  our  work  with 
patience. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Mediumship  and  the  Mental  Sensations 
of  the  Medium 

l~N  the  four  preceding  chapters  I  have  tried 
■*■  to  record  and  classify  some  of  the  most  in- 
teresting experiences  which  have  come  to  me 
personally  through  automatism,  the  only 
method  by  which  I  have  endeavored  to  hold 
communication  with  the  Unknown.  These  are 
records  of  some  six  or  seven  years'  work, 
which  was  never  strenuous  and  always  inter- 
mittent, and  that  for  many  reasons,  one  being 
that,  although  psychical  research  has  offered 
me  many  fascinating  problems  and  has  given 
me  many  delightful  friends,  it  is  not  my  chief 
interest  in  life.  Indeed,  I  will  go  further,  and 
say  I  am  glad  it  has  never  absorbed  me. 

104 


MEDIUMSHIP  105 

This  may  seem  discouraging  to  the  en- 
thusiast but  I  make  the  statement  advisedly, 
partly  because  I  believe  that,  for  the  average 
sensitive,  good  results  can  only  be  obtained  by 
great  moderation  in  the  expenditure  of  psychic 
power.  Evil  results  follow  almost  invariably 
on  too  constant  sittings.  I  am  entirely  con- 
vinced that,  in  practicing  any  artificial  branch 
of  psychic  study  or  in  the  cultivation  of  medi- 
umistic  power,  great  and  incalculable  dangers 
are  run:  an  exhausted  sensitive  is  practically 
useless  for  experimental  work,  and  may  lose 
his  or  her  power  completely,  in  addition  to  seri- 
ously impairing  his  or  her  health. 

When  I  speak  of  "artificial"  branches  of 
psychic  work,  I  mean  that  work  which  is  pro- 
duced by  a  deliberate  attempt  to  obtain  re- 
sults— seances  or  sittings  of  any  kind,  table- 
turning,  etc.  A  "natural"  sensitive  comes 
under  a  different  heading.  When  this  gift  ap- 
pears early  in  life  its  exercise  cannot  be 
avoided.     Results  come  to  the  medium;  the 


106  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

medium  does  not  seek  them,  and  probably  in 
these  cases  they  are  not  injurious,  and  cer- 
tainly they  are  inevitable. 

The  "cultivated"  medium  who  has  limited 
gifts  and  who  wishes  to  strengthen  these 
gifts  should  be  content  with  the  limitations  set 
on  the  work  he  can  do,  and  should  not  attempt 
to  force  them  in  any  way.  He  should  never 
"sit"  when  he  is  ill  or  tired,  and  in  his  best 
condition  he  should  deliberately  make  up  his 
mind  that  this  subject  is  not  going  to  absorb 
him. 

In  this  way  more  satisfactory  work  can  be 
done.  When  I  reflect  how  irregular  our  own 
sittings  have  been,  and  that  we  have  never 
ventured  on  more  than  two  in  a  week,  I  am 
fairly  well  satisfied  with  the  modest  results  we 
have  achieved,  and  I  am  quite  convinced  that 
these  results  would  not  have  been  achieved  had 
we  worked  our  small  fund  of  psychic  power 
more  strenuously  than  we  did.     If  all  circles 


MEDIUMSHIP  107 

would  be  content  to  work  patiently  and  slowly, 
not  to  become  possessed  by  this  one  topic,  and 
not  to  expect  anything  sensational,  I  believe 
the  mass  of  evidence  thus  accumulated  would 
throw  more  light  on  the  study  of  the  Unseen 
than  they  realize.  In  the  formation  of  small 
circles  many  matters  have  to  be  considered, 
the  chief  one  being  a  combination  of  really 
suitable  sitters.  At  the  ouija-board,  where  two 
persons  work  together,  it  is  all-important  to 
discover  mediums  whose  respective  qualities 
balance  and  assist  each  other.  The  control  will 
generally  say  he  requires  "a  negative  and  a 
positive.,,  What  this  means  exactly  it  is  hard 
to  understand,  but  from  watching  many  com- 
binations at  the  ouija-board  I  have  gathered 
that  a  "positive"  medium  receives  the  message 
through  his  or  her  brain  and  transmits  it  to 
the  board,  while  a  negative  possesses  the  driv- 
ing force — I  mean  that,  apparently,  one  sitter 
supplies  mental,  and  the  other  muscular  power. 


108  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

Force  is  necessary,  and  the  sitter  whose  brain 
and  eyes  are  used  does  not  seem  to  supply  as 
much  force  as  the  negative,  whose  senses  are 
less  suited  to  serve  the  control.  In  arranging 
a  circle  for  automatism,  two  sitters  should  be 
chosen  who  possess  respectively  the  qualities  I 
mention  as  far  as  can  be  discovered.  A  quick, 
intelligent  recorder  should  be  the  third  element. 
Great  care,  accuracy,  and  rapidity  are  neces- 
sary to  read  the  ouija-board,  and  this  office 
should  be  taken  entirely  off  the  sitters' 
shoulders.  They  should  be  in  a  quiet  and  re- 
laxed state  of  mind — in  fact,  the  less  they 
realize  what  is  taking  place  the  better. 

The  gift  of  "seeing  without  eyes"  is  cer- 
tainly comparatively  rare.  I  have  sought  dili- 
gently for  mediums  who  possess  the  power  of 
working  blindfold,  and  find  they  are  few  in 
number.  In  fact,  I  have  only  met  four  out  of 
the  many  I  have  tried  who  have  this  gift.  I 
generally  distinguish  a  blindfold  worker  by  the 
fact  that  before  he  has  had  any  suggestion  that 


MEDIUMSHIP  109 

/e  should  close  our  eyes  he  will  close  his  of 
his  own  accord,  and  prefer  to  sit  without  look- 
ing at  the  letters.  Blindfold  sitting  is  very  ex- 
hausting as  a  rule ;  I  find  it  so  especially  when 
the  control  or  communicator  works  chiefly 
through  me,  as  it  invariably  does  when  my 
fellow-sitter  is  a  beginner.  Here  I  should  like 
to  refer  to  the  mental  state  of  the  sitter  for 
automatic  experiments,  for  it  is  difficult  for 
persons  who  have  not  been  sitters  themselves 
to  judge  how  far  the  psychic  is  in  a  normal 
condition  when  practicing  automatism. 

The  crux  in  deciding  whether  or  not  an  ex- 
ternal influence  is  at  work  consists  in  determin- 
ing how  far  the  subliminal  self  plays  a  part  in 
these  experiments.  No  one  present  is  in  a 
more  difficult  position  to  judge  of  this  than  the 
automatist  himself.  When  at  the  board  I  am 
not  conscious  that  my  condition  is  other  than 
normal,  but  if  I  were  asked  whether  or  not  I 
used  my  hand  to  push  the  traveler  to  certain 
letters  I  should  be  quite  unable  to  reply.     If 


110  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

I  do  this,  it  is  an  entirely  subconscious  action 
on  my  part.  What  I  can  state  confidently  is, 
that  after  a  short  time  messages  come  through 
my  brain  before  they  are  written  down,  and 
I  am  again  unable  to  say  whether  they  are 
suggestions  from  an  external  entity  or  not.  I 
am  inclined  to  believe  they  are.  For  sometimes 
sentences  come  through  which  are  quite  con- 
trary to  what  I  should  expect,  and  again,  when 
I  am  most  desirous  that  the  traveler  should 
move  for  me,  it  stands  stock-still. 

I  am  absolutely  certain  that  the  sitters'  con- 
dition is  abnormal  once  the  control  or  com- 
municator takes  possession  of  the  arm.  In  the 
case  of  Mr.  X.,  he  closes  his  eyes  and  turns 
involuntarily  away  from  the  board,  and  often, 
after  a  few  minutes,  gets  into  a  state  of  half 
trance.  He  appears  to  become  seized  by  the 
emotions  of  the  control  in  communication; 
grief,  anger,  etc.,  overcome  him,  and  if  the 
emotion  is  intense  he  becomes  hypnotized  and 
is  unable  to  continue  the  sitting.     A  point 


MEDIUMSHIP  111 

which  is  very  marked  in  ouija-board  work  is 
the  obedience  and  caution  of  the  influences  that 
speak.  It  is  quite  easy,  as  a  rule,  to  get  rid 
of  an  unpleasant  entity;  it  is  easy  also  to  call 
up  any  special  person,  though  I  have  a  great 
objection  to  doing  this,  as  it  seems  to  leave 
the  field  open  for  fraud  and  impersonation.  If 
a  dangerous  or  unpleasant  subject  is  spoken  of, 
it  quite  amusing  to  observe  the  prudence  and 
tact  displayed  by  the  control.  It  rather  points 
to  the  subconscious  theory.  Only  once  in  all 
my  experience  have  I  known  a  control  make  a 
really  untactful  remark. 

An  interesting  point  I  have  noticed  in 
automatism,  as  practiced  by  two  mediums 
working  jointly  at  the  ouija-board,  is  the  trans- 
ference of  force  from  one  to  the  other  accord- 
ing to  the  nature  of  the  control  or  communi- 
cator. For  instance,  in  the  case  of  Peter  and 
Eyen  the  force  seems  to  come  chiefly  from  me. 
With  Astor  (who  professes  to  be  her  spirit 
guide)  Miss  C.'s  hand  is  powerfully  controlled, 


112  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

and  I  appear  to  add  practically  nothing  to  the 
force  which  moves  the  traveler  from  letter  to 
letter.  In  the  case  of  Sir  Hugh  Lane,  Mr. 
Lennox  Robinson's  hand  and  arm  are  literally 
seized  and  pushed  about  so  forcibly  that  it  is 
most  difficult  to  read  the  communications 
which  come  through.  The  traveler  has  more 
than  once  been  flung  off  the  board  in  a  violent 
way  with  this  communicator. 

Those  who  are  -inclined  to  dismiss  what  we 
psychical  students  have  to  tell  as  foolish  and 
unconvincing  should  always  bear  in  mind  the 
difficulties  we  labor  under.  The  evidence  of 
survival  laid  before  the  public  is  at  best  only 
a  small  fraction  of  what  we  possess.  From  the 
very  private  and  intimate  nature  of  most  of 
the  messages  we  receive  it  is  impossible  that 
the  really  convincing  part  of  our  work  can  be 
exposed  to  the  public  gaze.  Personal  feeling 
constantly  stands  in  our  way.  We  may  be 
quite  positive  ourselves  that  we  have  spoken  to 
those  we  loved  who  have  passed  out  of  our 


MEDIUMSHIP  113 

lives,  and  yet  a  seal  may  be  set  on  our  mouths 
and  we  dare  not  say  the  word  which  would 
silence  the  skeptic. 

I  have  already  said  that  the  messages  re- 
ceived from  the  Unknown,  so  far  as  I  have  had 
any  knowledge  of  them,  are  essentially  per- 
sonal messages.  The  control,  and  still  more 
the  communicator,  appear  to  be  out  of  touch 
with  the  earth,  except  so  far  as  they  enter  into 
the  "aura"  of  some  living  human  being.  The 
only  instance  I  can  recall  of  a  message  con- 
cerning a  public  event  coming  directly  to  my 
circle  was  a  very  vivid  and  perfectly  correct 
prophecy  concerning  the  Balkan  War  which 
was  sent  to  us  by  Peter  through  a  communi- 
cator who  called  himself  "David  Isaac  Solo- 
mons," during  our  first  blindfold  sittings  on 
October  19th,  1912.  It  ran  as  follows: 
"Blood,  blood,  everywhere  in  the  Near  East. 
A  great  nation  will  fall  and  a  small  nation  will 
rise.  Blood  everywhere.  A  great  religion  will 
stand  in  danger.    News  that  will  astonish  the 


114  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

civilized  world  will  come  to  hand  within  the 
next  week." 

A  week  after  this  message  came  the  first 
Bulgarian  victory — Kirk  Kilisse — was  an- 
nounced, and  later  Turkey  fell  and  Bulgaria 
rose. 

I  do  not  consider  the  news  of  the  sinking 
of  the  Titanic  an  instance  of  information  of  a 
public  event  through  a  communicator,  as  I  be- 
lieve that  case  to  have  been  telepathic,  and  in 
the  Lusitania  case  a  personal  interest  was 
involved. 

Before  closing  this  chapter  I  have  only  a  few 
remarks  to  make.  One  of  these  is  on  the  value 
of  practical  experiment. 

I  urge  anyone  interested  in  this  subject  to 
try  his  own  powers  as  a  medium.  Until  prac- 
tical experiments  are  attempted,  no  fair  esti- 
mate of  the  subject  can  be  arrived  at.  Many 
admirable  books  have  been  written  concerning 
every  branch  of  psychical  study,  but  the  reader 
of  these  who  has  never  been  at  a  seance  or 


MEDIUMSHIP  115 

used  an  autoscope  has,  with  all  respect  to  him, 
no  notion  of  what  he  is  talking  of.  As  I  have 
said,  much  that  cannot  be  explained  to  the  pub- 
lic is  what  is  most  convincing  to  the  student, 
and  I  say  further,  there  is  much  of  what  is 
convincing  to  the  medium  that  cannot  be  ex- 
plained to  the  student.  If  possible,  sit  your- 
self, with  the  precaution  necessary;  analyze 
your  feelings,  and  try  to  do  so  with  a  clear  and 
open  mind,  not  starting  with  any  prejudice, 
religious  or  otherwise. 

The  personal  element  is  really  the  chief  ele- 
ment in  psychic  matters.  Messages  received 
through  the  autoscope  are  usually  personal. 
Hence  the  great  difficulty  in  handing  them 
over  in  their  entirety  for  public  dissection. 
Personality  counts  in  sittings  more  than  any- 
thing else.  One  uncongenial  person  can  upset 
a  whole  evening.  A  cold  or  unsympathetic  in- 
dividual, an  ultra-skeptical  or  contemptuous 
person,  is  detected  at  once  from  the  other  side, 


116  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

and  can  reduce  the  results  of  a  sitting  to  mere 
nonsense. 

Again,  a  sitter  who  is  even  slightly  ailing  re- 
tards results.  The  controls  talk  of  nothing  else 
when  this  happens ;  physical  conditions  seem  to 
count  even  more  than  mental  ones.  What  is 
strange  and  entertaining  to  the  observer  is  that 
the  personal  element  tells  as  much  on  this  side 
as  on  the  other.  I  have  often  watched,  with 
infinite  amusement,  how  someone  contemptu- 
ous or  indifferent  to  a  distressing  degree  be- 
comes keen  and  vivid  when  some  element  con- 
cerning his  own  personality  enters  into  the 
message!  Something  said  by  a  friend  of  his 
own,  or  relative,  or,  better  still,  a  visit  from 
his  own  "spirit  guide,"  who,  no  matter  what 
nonsense  he  talks,  can  rouse  and  excite  him. 
In  fact,  one  of  the  interests  one  finds  in 
psychical  work  is  that  it  not  only  reveals  the 
personalities  of  controls  and  communicators, 
but  also  human  personalities.  For  nothing  calls 
human  emotions  into  play  more  vividly  than 


MEDIUMSHIP  117 

this  converse  with  the  Unknown!  Pleasure, 
anger,  grief,  joy,  vanity,  common  sense,  curi- 
osity, and  wonder,  all  appear  at  the  ouija- 
board,  both  in  sitters  and  spectators. 

I  trust  that  what  I  have  said  in  this  chapter 
may  serve  the  purpose  which  I  have  intended 
it  should — that  is,  that  it  may  help  the  really 
earnest  student  to  approach  these  investiga- 
tions in  a  sane  and  inquiring  spirit,  without 
prejudice,  and  realizing  that  great  patience  and 
perseverance  are  required  if  even  a  few 
grains  of  gold  are  to  be  found  among  the 
mountains  of  dross. 


CHAPTER  VII 

psychometry  through  the  medium  and 
the  Control 

PSYCHOMETRY  is  a  term  which  may 
possibly  be  unfamiliar  to  some  of  my 
readers.  I  define  it  for  their  benefit,  there- 
fore, as  "a  psychic  power  possessed  by  certain 
individuals  which  enables  them  to  divine  the 
history  of,  or  events  connected  with,  a  ma- 
terial object  with  which  they  come  in  close 
contact." 

Incredible  as  the  fact  may  appear,  neverthe- 
less the  evidence  that  this  power  exists  is  most 
remarkable  and  difficult  to  explain  away.  The 
cases  of  psychometry  which  I  describe  in  this 
chapter   have  all  come   under  my  personal 

118 


PSYCHOMETRY  119 

notice;  I  have  no  gift  of  the  kind  myself,  but  I 
have  endeavored  to  observe  what  has  come 
before  me  carefully,  and  to  note  anything  of 
special  interest.  I  think  persons  who  possess 
the  gift  of  psychometry  are  not  necessarily 
sensitive  to  locality,  as  one  might  suppose.  I 
mean  that  it  would  seem  natural  that  a  per- 
son who  could  read  the  history  of  an  object  by 
touching  it  could  also  "sense"  a  place  in  which 
anything  striking  had  happened.  So  far  as  I 
have  known  them,  the  psychometrists  are  not 
by  any  means  influenced  by  locality.  Their 
power  manifests  itself  chiefly  by  physical  con- 
tact with  a  material  object. 

The  first  case  I  shall  mention  is  one  which, 
though  not  specially  striking,  had  one  feature 
which  interested  me  greatly.  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
M.  were  at  my  house  one  evening  at  a  seance. 
Mrs.  M.  has  remarkable  powers  as  a  trance 
medium.  She  is  not  a  professional.  Mr.  M. 
mentioned  to  me  casually  soon  after  he  arrived 
that    he    had    found    he    had    power    as    a 


120  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

psychometrist,  and  was  trying  to  cultivate  this 
gift;  he  asked  me  to  give  him  something  to 
hold  which  I  wore  constantly.  I  gave  him  a 
pearl  ear-ring  I  had  on,  and  he  held  it  in  his 
hand  during  the  seance.  Late  in  the  evening, 
when  I  had  forgotten  all  about  it,  Mr.  M.  re- 
minded me  of  this  ear-ring,  and  said  he  had 
received  many  impressions  from  it.  He  told 
me  many  things  about  myself,  all  of  which 
were  quite  correct  and  most  detailed.  He  de- 
scribed my  father  most  accurately — his  appear- 
ance, clothes,  occupation,  and  the  house  he 
lived  in.  Then  he  came  to  a  tale  about  myself 
which  concerned  a  man  in  India.  I  knew  noth- 
ing of  this,  and  told  him  he  was  wrong.  Mr. 
M.  seemed  very  clear  about  it,  and  said  I 
should  remember  it  later,  he  was  sure.  I  told 
my  sister  of  this,  and  at  first  she  failed  to 
place  the  incident,  but  a  few  days  after  she 
said  to  me:  "Mr.  M.  was  quite  right,  after  all; 
I  have  been  thinking  about  it.  The  ear-ring  was 
mine  first;  I  gave  it  to  you,  and  the  story  of 


PSYCHOMETRY  121 

the  man  in  India  concerned  me."  And  she  re- 
minded me  of  the  circumstances  which  Mr.  M. 
had  made  no  mistake  about — even  to  the  de- 
tail of  a  pet  dog  possessed  by  the  man  in  ques- 
tion, which  my  sister  verified. 

The  interesting  point  here  was  that  telepathy 
from  me  could  not  explain  the  fact,  and  also 
that  the  ear-ring  should  have  retained  part  of 
the  history  of  the  person  it  first  belonged  to. 
This  reading  made  by  Mr.  M.  contained,  like 
most  of  the  readings  of  psychometrists  and 
clairvoyants,  scraps  of  this  and  that.  Every- 
thing in  the  case  was  perfectly  correct,  but  the 
mental  pictures  came,  as  they  always  do,  like 
cinema  pictures — no  sooner  there  than  gone, 
and  an  entirely  different  scene  revealed — and 
one  of  these  moving  pictures  illustrated  a  scrap 
of  my  sister's  life.  Hence  the  puzzle  it  pre- 
sented to  me. 

Another  and  even  more  interesting  case  of 
psychometry  occurred  with  my  friend  Miss  C. 

In  June,  19 14,  a  lady  in  London,  Mrs.  S.,  did 


122  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

a  most  remarkable  reading  of  the  present  and 
future  for  me,  of  which  I  have  spoken  already. 
This  lady  appeared  to  get  in  touch  with  me  in 
a  most  complete  and  rapid  manner ;  she  recog- 
nized at  once  that  I  had  some  power  as  a 
medium,  and  seemed  to  find  that  fact  helpful 
to  her. 

In  May,  191 6,  Miss  C.  was  in  London,  and 
visited  the  same  lady,  hoping  for  a  good  re- 
sult in  clairvoyance.  When  starting  for  Mrs. 
S.'s  house,  Miss  C.  received  a  letter  from  me, 
and,  not  having  time  to  read  it,  carried  it  with 
her  in  her  hand.  Mrs.  S.  was  not  very  suc- 
cessful with  Miss  C,  and,  having  made  a  few 
not  very  interesting  remarks,  she  suddenly 
said:  "You  have  a  letter  in  your  hand  from 
someone  whose  name  begins  with  H. ;  give  it  to 
me."  Miss  C.  handed  Mrs.  S.  my  letter,  and, 
having  held  it  to  her  forehead  for  a  moment, 
she  proceeded  to  pour  out  my  history  to  Miss  C, 
past,  present,  and  future,  and  this,  as  events 
showed,  with  perfect  accuracy  in  every  detail. 


PSYCHOMETRY  123 

Now,  Mrs.  S.  had  only  seen  me  once  two  years 
before,  and  did  not  then  even  know  my  name, 
and  she  had  never  seen  Miss  C.  and  me  to- 
gether, so  that  so  far  as  she  knew — even  allow- 
ing that  she  remembered  me — she  could  not 
have  associated  us  with  each  other  in  any  way. 
I  consider  this  the  most  notable  case  of 
psychometry  I  have  come  across.  The  fact 
that  Mrs.  S.  detected  my  letter  in  Miss  C.'s 
hand,  gave  the  initial  letter  of  my  name,  and 
then,  by  some  supernormal  faculty,  holding  the 
writing  in  her  hand,  gathered  a  long  and  most 
complicated  story  from  it,  was,  to  my  thinking, 
astounding. 

Another  case  of  a  different  nature,  perhaps 
almost  as  remarkable  as  the  last,  came  through 
Miss  M.,  a  personal  friend  of  my  own,  who  is 
gifted  with  telepathic  and  clairvoyant  power 
and  can  psychometrize  in  a  most  remarkable 
way.  In  December,  191 7,  I  was  at  a  friend's 
house  one  afternoon,  and  met  Miss  M.  there. 
My  friend  had  brought  a  parcel  with  her  from 


124  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

the  country,  containing  a  stone,  a  piece  of 
mortar,  a  piece  of  charred  wood,  and  a  frag- 
ment of  molding  from  the  outside  wall  of  a 
building. 

Miss  M.  took  up  these  objects  one  by  one, 
and,  selecting  the  piece  of  molding,  held  it  in 
her  hand  for  a  considerable  time.  She  began 
by  saying  she  saw  a  "place"  in  the  country 
where  it  seemed  dark — figures  were  moving 
about.  She  noticed  one  man  particularly.  He 
wore  rough  clothes,  was  not  a  peasant,  and  not 
a  gentleman!  She  felt  there  was  treachery 
about  him.  The  "place"  had  a  history;  some- 
thing had  happened  there  more  than  once. 
There  were  outhouses  behind  the  place,  and 
she  saw  animals  being  driven  hastily  out  of 
them.  She  saw  a  fire  smoldering  there ;  it  had 
been  a  great  fire.  She  saw  a  woman  in  the 
place  and  a  man,  whom  she  thought  was  her 
husband.  The  woman  had  far  the  stronger 
personality  of  the  two. 

Now,  the  house  in  question  had  been  burnt 


PSYCHOMETRY  125 

down  three  times.  The  fires  had  taken  place 
at  night,  and  it  had  never  been  discovered  how 
these  had  occurred.  The  cattle  had  been 
driven  out  of  the  barns  on  the  last  occasion  by 
some  unknown  person.  The  owners  of  the 
house  were  as  Miss  M.  described  them.  The 
woman  had  a  far  stronger  personality  than  her 
husband.  I  need  hardly  add  that  Miss  M. 
knew  nothing  of  any  of  these  circumstances — 
neither  where  the  house  was  nor  that  a  house 
was  in  question,  unless  she  guessed  the  fact 
from  the  piece  of  molding. 

This  reading  was  very  wonderful,  I  thought, 
and  what  puzzled  me  most  was  why  the  piece 
of  molding  carried  this  history  with  it  when 
the  stone,  mortar,  and  wood  told  no  tale !  Pos- 
sibly this  was  because  the  molding  was  a  more 
essential  part  of  the  building.  Psychometry  is 
a  complete  mystery  to  me.  I  cannot  form  any 
satisfactory  theory  as  to  why  an  inanimate 
object  should  stimulate  clairvoyant  power  as  I 
have  described. 


126  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

I  have  seen  far  more  psychometry  coming 
through  the  control  than  through  the  medium. 
I  mean  that  in  the  course  of  recent  sittings  we 
have  had  a  large  group  of  cases  in  which  vari- 
ous objects  were  laid  on  the  ouija-table  and 
psychometry  was  obtained  through  the  help  of 
Shamar  or  Astor,  when  no  human  being  was 
present  who  possessed  psychometric  power 
even  in  a  slight  degree.  These  experiments 
have  been  made  lately,  but  so  far  we  have  not 
tried  any  case  in  which  no  one  in  the  room 
knew  anything  about  the  object  placed  on  the 
table;  so  possibly  I  am  wrong  in  classing  the 
larger  number  of  them  under  the  head  of 
psychometry:  they  may  come  more  fittingly 
under  the  head  of  telepathy.  However,  as  they 
all  consist  in  elucidating  the  history  of  an  ob- 
ject apparently  through  contact  with  the 
traveler,  I  add  them  to  this  chapter. 

In  the  cases  I  now  quote  various  objects 
were  laid  on  the  ouija  board.  My  guide, 
Shamar,  purported  to  give  us  their  history  by 


PSYCHOMETRY  127 

touching  them — i.e.,  the  traveler  touched  the 
object  from  time  to  time,  sometimes  vio- 
lently, nearly  knocking  it  off  the  table — and 
once  when  her  own  knowledge  failed  her  by 
bringing  some  other  entity  better  qualified  to 
speak  on  the  subject  than  herself.  In  one  case, 
perhaps  the  most  interesting  of  the  group, 
Miss  C.  was  one  of  the  sitters,  and  the  psy- 
chometry  came  through  her  guide,  Astor,  who 
seemed  quite  as  proficient  as  Shamar  in  psy- 
chometric power, 

I  give  several  of  these  cases  in  the  order  in 
which  they  came,  but  it  is  impossible  to  em- 
body the  entire  script  of  each  in  the  small  space 
I  have  at  my  disposal. 


i.  Fountain  Pen:  Sitters,  Mrs.  Tr avers  Smith 

and  Mr.  B. 

In  the  first  case  we  tried  in  this  way:  an 
ordinary  fountain-pen  was  placed  on  the  table; 


128  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

it  belonged  to  the  Rev.  S.  H.,  who  was  present. 
(He  was  not  sitting.)  Having  examined  it 
carefully,  Shamar  told  us  that  it  had  belonged 
to  someone  else  before  it  came  to  its  present 
owner;  the  man  who  first  possessed  it  was 
dead;  it  had  not  been  left  to  the  Rev.  S.  H., 
but  given  to  him  by  a  woman  connected  with 
the  dead  man.  Shamar  described  this  man  as 
a  hard-headed  business  person. 

All  these  details  were  correct;  it  was  the 
first  and  least  remarkable  case  we  tried,  but  it 
was  interesting,  as  the  object  was  quite  an 
ordinary  fountain-pen,  which  could  suggest 
nothing  to  the  sitters. 


2.  Opal  Set  in  Silver:  Sitters,  Mrs,  Tr avers 
Smith  and  Mr.  B. 

In  the  second  case  I  quote  a  jewel  was  put 
on  the  table,  an  opal  of  a  peculiarly  pale  color 
set  in  a  curious  way.    Shamar  gave  us  the  his- 


PSYCHOMETRY  129 

tory  of  this  stone  from  the  time  it  was  found 
in  a  quarry  in  China ;  she  described  many  per- 
sons who  had  possessed  the  stone,  and  how  it 
had  passed  from  hand  to  hand  chiefly  because 
its  psychic  properties  brought  misfortune  to 
those  who  wore  it.  She  told  us  of  many  forms 
in  which  it  had  been  set;  that  it  had  belonged 
to  a  French  Prince  whose  initial  was  L. ;  that 
he  had  been  killed  by  some  man  deliberately; 
that  after  his  death  it  had  passed  into  the 
hands  of  a  woman,  who  possessed  it  for  a  very 
short  time,  and  that  she  also  met  a  violent 
death.    Her  initials  were  M.  A. 

Now,  the  owner  of  the  ring  was  sitting,  and 
he  could  verify  several  of  the  facts  mentioned 
by  Shamar — among  them  that  the  stone  had 
belonged  to  Louis  XVIth  just  before  his  execu- 
tion ;  that  he  had  had  it  conveyed  to  Marie  An- 
toinette, in  whose  possession  it  had  remained 
until  her  execution. 


130  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

3.  Ruby  Ring:  Sitters,  Mrs.   Tr avers  Smith 

and  Mr.  B. 

In  the  third  case  a  very  fine  sixteenth- 
century  ring,  set  with  a  large  and  beautifully 
cut  ruby,  was  on  the  board.  Shamar  gave  us 
a  good  deal  of  its  history  herself,  and  when 
her  own  knowledge  failed  her,  she  brought  us 
a  priest  named  Shamouni,  a  Zoroastrian  who 
had  worn  the  stone  in  former  times.  He  told 
us  he  was  the  head  of  some  Eastern  occult 
order,  and  had  had  the  power  (when  alive)  of 
leaving  the  body ;  he  said  the  ruby  was  full  of 
magic,  and  had  helped  him  to  do  this.  He  gave 
us  information  about  the  Zoroastrian  religion 
which  was  unknown  to  us,  but  which  we  have 
verified  as  being  quite  correct;  he  told  us  that 
when  the  ruby  was  in  his  possession  it  was  not 
cut  as  it  is  at  present.  He  explained  some  of 
the  symbols  that  are  on  it,  and  described  an- 
other which  he  said  was  in  the  place  which  is 


PSYCHOMETRY  131 

now  engraved  with  a  fine  head  of  Jupiter  (ob- 
viously of  Western  workmanship).  We  in- 
quired carefully  about  this  symbol  (the  priest 
traced  it  for  us  on  the  board  with  the  traveler) . 
We  have  succeeded  in  drawing  it,  and  it 
proves  to  be  the  sign  of  Leo.  After  this 
Shamar  came  again,  and  continued  the  his- 
tory of  the  ring.  She  described  it  as  having 
been  presented  to  one  of  the  Popes  by  some 
religious  order  in  Rome,  and  it  was  handed 
down  from  one  Pope  to  another.  The  owner 
of  the  ring  was  in  the  room,  but  not  sitting ;  he 
believed  the  stone  had  belonged  to  the  head  of 
some  occult  order  in  the  East,  and  he  had  also 
been  told  it  had  been  in  the  possession  of  sev- 
eral of  the  Popes.  Shamar  gave  the  date  of 
the  present  setting  quite  correctly;  also  the 
nature  of  the  stone,  which  was  not  an  ordinary 
ruby;  the  communication  was  very  long  and 
detailed. 


182  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

4.  Cross:  Sitters,  Mrs.  Tr avers  Smith  and 

Mr.  B. 

The  next  case  I  mention  is  an  interesting 
one.  A  cross  was  the  object  in  question.  It 
suggested  little  in  the  rather  dim  light  we  have 
at  our  sittings,  except  that  it  was  embossed  and 
made  of  some  white  metal.  Shamar  stated 
that  it  was  made  in  Italy,  the  metal  being  a 
mixture  of  bronze  and  silver.  It  then  came  to 
France,  and  was  sold  to  a  woman  who  always 
wore  it  as  a  "kind  of  amulet."  She  described 
this  woman  as  beautiful,  and  a  Princess  or 
noble  person.  She  stated  that  this  woman  had 
brought  the  cross  with  her  to  England;  that 
there  she  had  been  unhappy,  and  had  met  her 
death  suddenly.  She  was  killed  by  a  "knife," 
and  had  no  time  to  prepare  her  soul  for  its 
journey  to  the  other  world,  as  she  only  knew 
she  was  to  die  a  few  hours  beforehand.  The 
owner  of  the  cross  was  present.    He  knew  it 


PSYCHOMETRY  133 

was  said  to  have  belonged  to  Mary,  Queen  of 
Scots ;  it  was  a  reliquary  made  of  some  white 
metal  (not  pure  silver)  enameled.  Strangely 
enough,  the  word  "Scotland"  was  in  my  mind 
during  the  whole  sitting,  though  I  did  not  asso- 
ciate the  object  with  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots — in 
fact,  her  name  never  occurred  to  me.  The 
word  "Scotland,"  however,  was  never  spelt 
out  on  the  board,  which  tells  against  the  sub- 
conscious theory. 


5.  Piece  of  Alabaster:  Sitters,  Miss  C.  and 

Mr.  B. 


In  this  case  a  piece  of  alabaster  was  on  the 
table.  It  conveyed  no  suggestion  to  the  sitters 
further  than  a  rather  large  egg-shaped  pebble 
would — in  fact,  no  one  present  recognized  it  as 
alabaster.  The  object  belonged  to  the  Rev. 
S.  H.,  who  was  in  the  room;  the  sitters  were 


134  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

Miss  C.  and  Mr.  B.  The  control  in  this  case 
was  Astor.  A  very  long  communication  came 
through,  in  which  it  appeared  that  the  object 
had  come  from  the  Pyramids,  which  were  de- 
scribed with  many  details  unknown  to  the  sit- 
ters; the  tombs  in  the  desert  and  the  funeral 
rites  of  Ancient  Egypt  were  also  described 
most  rapidly  and  in  very  excellent  English. 
The  whole  communication  presented  a  picture 
of  Ancient  Egypt  quite  remarkable  in  its  vivid- 
ness. It  was  only  at  the  conclusion  of  the  sit- 
ting that  the  owner  told  us  that  the  piece  of 
alabaster  had  been  brought  to  him  from  one  of 
the  Pyramids. 


6.  Silver  or  Steel  Ring  with  Coat  of  Arms 

Engraved  on  it:  Sitters,  Mrs.  Tr  avers 

Smith  and  Mr.  A. 

A  beautifully  chased  ring  was  laid  on  the 
board.     The  metal  from  which  it  was  made 


PSYCHOMETRY  135 

appeared  to  be  steel  or  silver;  a  coat  of  arms 
was  engraved  on  it,  but  that  conveyed  no  idea 
to  me.  Shamar  was  the  control.  She  said  the 
ring  was  made  in  Italy,  and  brought  from  that 
country  to  France*.  It  was  sold  to  a  man  of 
high  degree,  a  nobleman,  she  thought.  She 
described  him  as  being  closely  connected  with 
the  French  Court.  She  saw  him  wearing 
scarlet  robes  and  a  closely  fitting  scarlet  cap; 
she  said  that  he  was  cunning  and  full  of  guile, 
not  so  much  through  his  own  efforts  as 
through  a  woman's  assistance;  he  was  Italian 
by  birth.  Mr.  B.,  who  had  just  bought  the 
ring,  was  in  the  room ;  he  did  not  know  its  his- 
tory, but  the  coat  of  arms  was  that  of  the 
Medici  family,  and  he  thought  the  psychometry 
clearly  pointed  to  the  ring  having  possibly  be- 
longed to  Cardinal  Mazarin,  though  this  had 
not  been  told  him  when  purchasing  it. 


136  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

7.  Large  Gold  Ring,  Finely  Chased:  Sitters, 
Miss  C.  and  Mr.  B. 

Astor  said :  "This  was  worn  by  a  person  of 
rank  with  a  dark  face.  He  was  very  proud 
and  stood  upon  his  dignity.  He  was  involved 
in  many  intrigues  of  a  somewhat  mean  and 
despicable  nature.  He  was  crafty  and  full  of 
guile.  He  trapped  some  innocent  people  and 
led  them  to  ruin,  I  think.  (What  was  his 
nationality?)  I  would  not  like  to  say,  but  it 
was  once  in  Spain;  I  think  it  was  not  there 
long.  It  was  given  to  a  woman  as  the  price 
of  her  beauty,  and  that  was  not  the  end. 
(What  country  did  the  man  belong  to?) 
France,  perhaps,  but  I  think  the  man  had 
Southern  blood.  (What  was  his  name?)  He 
was  a  man  engaged  governing  people  despoti- 
cally. He  was  tyrannical  by  nature,  and  he  op- 
pressed the  weak  and  caused  great  suffering. 
I  think  he  was  not  long-lived,  because  he  seems 


PSYCHOMETRY  137 

not  to  have  died  naturally.  He  was  in  some 
great  trouble  or  difficulty,  and  that  affected  his 
health.  He  did  not  die  in  the  natural  way 
from  age.  (What  country  did  he  die  in?)  It 
was  not  in  France,  I  am  sure.  I  think  he  was 
on  a  bare  spot  in  close  proximity  to  the  sea. 
He  might  have  been  a  soldier.    He  might  have 

been  a I  have  got  a  name.    I  think  it  is 

Napoleon.  (Why  did  you  not  get  his  name 
at  once?)  I  can  only  get  slowly  into  the 
atmosphere." 

The  ring  was  Napoleon's  coronation  ring. 

A  locket  containing  Napoleon's  hair  was 
now  placed  on  the  table.  Astor  said:  "This 
was  not  so  close  to  him,  I  imagine.  He  was 
not  so  close  to  it,  because  I  cannot  get  his 
atmosphere  from  it."  The  locket  was  modern, 
and  the  traveler  did  not  come  into  contact  with 
the  hair  which  was  enclosed  in  it. 

I  have  related  these  cases  for  what  they  are 
worth.  In  each  of  them  the  owner  of  the  ob- 
ject psychometrized  was  present,  and  knew 


138  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

more  or  less  of  its  history.  I  acted  as  medium 
and  Shamar  as  control  in  all  but  two  in- 
stances— that  of  the  piece  of  alabaster  from 
the  Pyramids  and  in  the  case  of  Napoleon's 
coronation  ring,  when  Miss  C.  was  the  me- 
dium and  Astor  the  control. 

This  kind  of  work  may  quite  reasonably  be 
described  as  "telepathy."  I  have  not  come 
across  any  case  of  psychometry  yet  through 
medium  or  control  where  no  one  was  present 
who  knew  anything  of  the  object  psycho- 
metrized; but  even  allowing  that  these  cases 
were  due  to  thought  transference,  I  think  they 
are  sufficiently  interesting  and  remarkable  to 
be  recorded  here. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
Summing  Up 

IN  this,  the  last  chapter  of  my  book,  I  have 
set  myself  a  difficult  task.  I  shall  make  an 
attempt  to  sum  up  and  lay  before  my  readers 
whatever  evidence  I  have  received  for  and 
against  the  presence  of  an  external  influence 
working  through  us  as  we  sit  at  the  ouija- 
board.  I  limit  myself  strictly  to  my  own  line 
of  research:  I  do  not  propose  to  go  outside 
my  personal  experiences.  What  makes  any 
definite  pronouncement  on  this  subject  almost 
impossible  is  that,  no  matter  what  theory  one 
holds,  it  is  difficult  to  adhere  to  it  rigidly,  for 
the  simple  reason  that,  although  the  results  of 
nine  sittings  might  be  accounted  for  by  our 

139 


140  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

subliminal  self  or  telepathy,  at  the  tenth  sitting 
something  may  occur  which  upsets  and  puz- 
zles us  and  leads  us  to  believe  that,  after  all, 
something  supernormal  has  got  possession  of 
us.  It  must  always  be  borne  in  mind  that  I 
write  as  a  sitter,  not  as  an  observer,  therefore  I 
am  in  a  position  to  speak  of  the  personal  sen- 
sations of  the  medium.  It  seems  simplest  to 
take  my  chapters  in  the  order  I  have  written 
them,  and  give  my  conclusions  on  each  separate 
subject.  First  as  to  the  nature  of  what  calls 
itself  "the  control." 

The  control,  as  I  have  explained  it  in  my 
second  chapter,  is  exactly  of  the  nature  of  an 
intimate  acquaintance;  the  word  "familiar"  ex- 
presses it  admirably.  We  say,  "Oh,  here  is 
Peter  or  Astor  or  Shamar,"  and  we  know  the 
kind  of  communication  we  may  expect,  and  we 
are  never  disappointed.  Peter,  Astor,  and 
Shamar  have  always  the  same  personalities, 
and  we  can  count  on  the  communicators  each 
will  call  up  for  us. 


SUMMING  UP  141 

Shall  we  decide,  then,  that  once  having  de- 
termined the  characteristics  of  a  control,  our 
subconsciousness  supplies  the  rest?  We  have 
had  a  certain  suggestion  made  to  us,  and  our 
subliminal  self  sets  to  work,  spins  web  after 
web  for  us;  each  web  is  woven  on  the  same 
plan.  We  call  our  webs  Astor  or  Eyen  or 
Peter,  but  Astor,  Eyen,  and  Peter  are  three 
suggestions  which  have  been  offered  to  our 
minds,  and  proceed  to  spin  Astor's  pattern  or 
Eyen's  or  Peter's  as  any  of  the  three  names  is 
spelt  on  the  board. 

But  now  comes  the  question,  From  what  did 
the  original  suggestion  arise?  Where  did 
these  names  come  from,  and  the  histories  at- 
tached to  them?  Had  the  circle  been  chatting 
about  the  East  when  Shamar  appeared  and  de- 
scribed herself  as  a  Hindoo?  Had  the  conver- 
sation turned  on  America  when  Peter  Rooney 
introduced  himself?  I  can  say  confidently, 
"No."  I  have  no  clue  as  to  the  origin  of  these 
influences.    I  cannot  account  for  them.    They 


142  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

are  so  vivid  to  me  that  I  feel  as  if  I  could  de- 
scribe their  appearances  and  manners;  the 
courtly,  slippery  Eyen,  the  rough  and  practical 
Peter,  the  dignified  and  simple  Shamar,  the 
fiery  and  headlong  Astor,  with  his  arrogant 
prophecies.  The  manner  in  which  the  arm  is 
controlled  in  each  case  is  quite  different. 
Shamar  and  Eyen  are  smooth  and  easy,  though 
the  motion  in  each  case  feels  different  to  the 
sitter;  Peter  is  violent  and  erratic;  Astor  is 
amazingly  rapid,  and  seizes  the  arm  in  a  very 
powerful  way.  They  quite  remind  one  of  the 
personages  in  Schumann's  "Carnival,"  which 
he  explains  as  his  different  moods;  Florestan, 
Eusebius,  etc. 

The  human  mind  has  been  described  as  a 
rock  of  which  three-fourths  is  submerged  in 
water;  the  fourth  part,  which  is  not  sub- 
merged, is  the  conscious  mind.  It  is  a  danger- 
ous matter  to  pronounce  on  the  powers  of  the 
submerged  three-fourths  of  ourselves,  of 
which  we  know  little  or  nothing;  we  may  be 


SUMMING  UP  143 

capable  under  certain  semi-hypnotic  conditions 
of  much  that  we  are  totally  unconscious  of  in 
our  normal  state.  I  consciously  find  it  hard 
to  believe  that  I,  who  have  made  no  special 
study  of  India  or  Persia,  could  spin  out  long 
tales  about  the  East  without  stop  or  hesitation, 
putting  ideas  and  sentences  together  at  a  rate 
which  makes  it  difficult  to  take  down  the  com- 
munication unless  in  shorthand;  but  my  sub- 
merged portion  may  possibly  be  able  to  do  this. 
I  feel  that  I  have,  as  I  said  before,  no  explana- 
tion to  offer  as  to  where  the  original  sugges- 
tions of  these  controls  came  from;  no  positive 
proof  of  their  origin  can  be  obtained,  I  think, 
and  it  seems  simplest  to  accept  their  own  ac- 
count of  themselves  and  pass  on  to  their  work 
which  they  help  us  to  accomplish. 

In  my  third  chapter  I  summed  up  as  far  as 
possible  the  evidence  I  have  of  survival.  In 
the  case  of  the  communicator,  proof  of  the 
presence  of  an  external  influence  seems  to  me 
stronger  than  in  the  case  of  the  control.    The 


144  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

control  is  very  remote;  he  is  vague  and  unsat- 
isfactory in  his  statements;  nothing  can  be 
proved  about  him;  we  have  to  take  him  more 
or  less  on  faith;  whereas  the  communicator  has 
frequently  made  statements  which  have  been 
a  mixture  of  fact  and  fiction,  and  occasionally 
has  stated  facts  only,  without  any  fiction,  as  in 
the  case  of  "Alice  Franks"  and  the  "Pearl 
Tie-pin"  case.  The  only  two  explanations 
possible  in  cases  such  as  these  are — (a)  That 
we  are  in  actual  communication,  directly  or  in- 
directly, with  a  person  who  has  passed  through 
the  experience  which  we  call  death;  or  (b) 
that  in  some  mysterious  and  inexplicable  way 
we  have  read  the  minds  of  persons  who  are 
not  in  touch  with  us  in  any  way,  and  that  for 
no  reason  which  we  can  understand.  I  mean 
the  minds  of  the  living  friends  or  relatives  of 
the  dead  person. 

This  explanation  appears  to  me  more  mar- 
velous than  the  first,  which  many  of  us  are 
inclined  to  reject  because  it  involves  belief  in 


SUMMING  UP  145 

what  we  call  the  "unreal."  After  all,  if  we 
admit  that  three-fourths  of  our  mentality  is 
submerged  and  that  one-fourth  only  consti- 
tutes our  consciousness,  are  we  qualified  to 
pronounce  on  what  is  "real"  and  what  is  "un- 
real"? Possibly  we  see  these  words  in  an  in- 
verted way;  the  large  reality  may  be  outside 
us ;  at  most  we  may  only  be  permitted  to  grasp 
an  atom  of  it  while  we  are  here  on  earth — in 
other  words,  our  consciousness  may  be  less 
able  to  grasp  reality  than  our  subconsciousness. 
I  am  not  by  any  means  convinced,  but  I  am 
inclined  to  believe  that  under  certain  unex- 
plained conditions  we  are  enabled  to  communi- 
cate with  the  dead.  I  think  we  have  had, 
through  the  reports  of  the  S.P.R.,  indisputable 
proof  of  premonitions  of  death  in  the  form  of 
visions  of  persons,  immediately  before  or  after 
they  have  passed  over.  In  the  same  way, 
through  the  ouija-board,  the  intense  emotion 
awakened  by  the  act  of  dying  seems  to  give  the 
spirit  the  power  to  communicate  the  fact  of 


146  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

his  or  her  death  by  means  of  the  sensitive  or 
medium.  The  term  "telepathy"  may  explain 
these  cases,  and  also  cases  of  appearances  and 
communications  long  after  death;  but  in  in- 
stances such  as  the  "Pearl  Tie-pin"  case,  in 
which  the  communication  came  through  a 
month  or  six  weeks  after  the  death  had  oc- 
curred, "telepathy"  is  a  natural  explanation, 
but  we  must  admit  that  this  is  telepathy  be- 
tween a  living  mind  and  a  discarnate  spirit. 

With  regard  to  "prevision"  throughr  the 
ouija-board,  so  far  as  I  have  come  across  in- 
stances of  this,  it  seems  to  me  likely  that  an 
external  influence  is  at  work;  I  make  this  state- 
ment chiefly  because  of  the  extreme  improba- 
bility of  some  of  the  predictions  I  have  come 
across,  many  of  which  proved  true,  and  which 
b'  ,e  made  me  smile  when  the  messages  were 
received.  If  prevision  is  not  explained  as  the 
work  of  an  external  influence,  we  must  at- 
t.  .uute  it  to  an  awakening  of  latent  clairvoyant 
power  in  our  subconsciousness  under  the  semi- 


SUMMING  UP  147 

hypnosis  produced  by  automatism.     This  is  a 
perfectly  rational  explanation,  and  one  which  I 
am  inclined  to  accept,  but  it  does  not  quite 
solve  the  problem.    Take  a  person  gifted  with 
clairvoyance  in  any  form,  and  consider  how 
difficult  it  is  to  account  for  this  power  of  look- 
ing into  the  past  or  future.    From  careful  ob- 
servation I  believe  that  no  clairvoyant  vision 
comes  except  in  a  state  of  semi-hypnosis;  the 
mind  must  be  quite  lax  and  ready  to  receive  the 
impression.    I  am  inclined  to  think  that  these 
impressions  come  from  some  source  external 
to  the  medium,  who  may  have  the  past  and 
present  in  his  or  her  subconsciousness,  but  so 
far  as  we  know  cannot  have  the  future.     No 
psychic  subject  is  more  difficult  than  that  of 
prevision,  and  I  merely  mention  what  seems  to 
me  the  simplest  and  most  probable  explanation. 
Prevision  through  a  medium  who  does  not 
possess  that  power  in  his  or  her  normal  state, 
coming  by  means  of  automatism,  is  a  puzzle 
which  I  do  not  venture  to  solve. 


148  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

The  psychometry  of  objects  through  the 
ouija-board  affords  some  evidence  of  the  pres- 
ence of  an  external  entity.  In  many  of  our 
experiments  we  have  had  persons  in  the  room 
who  knew  certain  facts  about  the  object  psy- 
chometrized; these  cases  can  reasonably  be 
called  simple  cases  of  telepathy,  but  I  maintain 
that  the  telepathic  powers  of  the  sitters  must 
be  considerably  heightened  when  sitting;  in  my 
normal  state  I  could  not  possibly  produce  the 
results  we  obtained. 

In  a  few  instances  we  have  psychometrized 
letters  or  objects,  the  contents  and  histories  of 
which  were  unknown  to  anyone  in  the  room. 
An  interesting  case  was  a  letter  written  by 
Miss  V.  to  a  friend  of  mine.  The  letter  was 
psychometrized.  The  control  (Shamar)  de- 
scribed rather  peculiar  circumstances  con- 
nected with  two  ladies  concerned,  and  also  gave 
a  very  detailed  description  of  Miss  X.'s  room, 
furniture,  pictures,  and  view  from  the  win- 
dows, etc. — all  quite  correct.     No  one  at  the 


SUMMING  UP  149 

sitting  knew  anything  about  the  room  in  ques- 
tion. It  seemed  clear  that  some  external  entity 
calling  itself  Shamar  was  responsible  for  this. 

Automatic  psychometry  affords  more  proof 
that  we  are  being  handled  by  something  out- 
side ourselves  than  any  other  branch  of  this 
work.  Since  writing  the  earlier  chapters  of 
this  book  I  have  had  two  most  striking  cases 
of  what  I  shall  call  "human  psychometry";  I 
mean  the  elucidation  of  striking  events  con- 
nected with  the  history  of  human  beings 
through  the  ouija-board. 

One  of  the  cases  I  am  going  to  speak  of 
afforded  a  more  remarkable  proof  of  the  pres- 
ence of  a  discarnate  spirit  than  anything  else 
that  has  come  under  my  notice ;  I  may,  indeed, 
call  it  conclusive.  At  one  of  our  usual  sit- 
tings last  spring  two  persons  quite  unknown  to 
me  were  present.  I  had  no  idea  that  they  had 
any  special  object  in  coming  to  our  circle  be- 
yond a  general  interest  in  automatism.  I  sat 
with  Mr.  B.,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  visitors. 


150  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

It  soon  became  clear  that  they  desired  a  special 
message  from  a  near  relative  who  had  passed 
over  a  long  time  before.  The  name  of  this 
relative  was  spelt  out  quite  correctly,  and  a 
message  which  meant  nothing  to  me,  but 
seemed  quite  evidential  to  those  concerned. 
The  sitting  was  a  long  one;  it  continued  for 
about  two  hours,  and  the  results  seemed  very 
amazing  to  my  visitors.  Of  course,  I  was  quite 
unable  to  judge  of  them,  as  the  circumstances 
were  unknown  to  me. 

A  few  nights  later,  when  our  usual  circle 
only  was  present,  we  had  another  sitting,  and 
the  same  communicator  spoke  to  us.  Mr.  X., 
who  had  not  been  at  the  previous  sitting,  came 
in  by  chance  and  sat  away  from  the  board,  not 
even  listening  to  the  message  which  was  being 
spelt  out.  He  fell  into  a  state  of  semi-trance 
and  complained  that  something  terribly  de- 
pressing was  in  the  room.  We  broke  off  the 
sitting  accordingly. 

We  had  a  third  sitting  a  few  nights  later, 


SUMMING  UP  151 

and  the  same  thing  occurred;  the  same  com- 
municator spoke  to  us,  and  Mr.  X.  came  in  and 
sat  at  a  distance  from  the  board.  Almost  im- 
mediately he  fell  again  into  trance  conditions 
and  appeared  greatly  distressed,  complaining 
of  some  very  depressing  influence,  and  we 
broke  off  the  sitting  as  before.  Later  in  the 
evening  the  Rev.  S.  Hv  hypnotized  Mr.  X., 
put  a  pencil  in  his  hand,  and  asked  him  to  do 
some  automatic  writing.  He  wrote  very  vio- 
lently the  same  message  again  and  again: 
"Send  this  terrible  thing  away;  it's  coming 
again.,,  We  thought  it  best  to  put  an  end  to 
the  sitting.  Next  day  my  sister,  who  knew 
nothing  about  these  sittings  beyond  the 
visitors'  names,  told  me  a  most  tragic  tale  con- 
nected with  this  communicator;  he  had  com- 
mitted suicide !  I  had  heard  nothing  whatever 
of  this  story  before.  That  evening  I  arranged 
to  go  to  the  theater.  About  the  hour  I  should 
have  started  I  got  a  violent  headache,  and  was 
much  upset  for  about  two  hours.    I  was  con- 


152  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

scious  of  abnormal  depression,  which  took  such 
complete  possession  of  me  I  was  unable  to  go 
out.  I  could  not  account  for  this  attack  in  any 
way.  I  have  never  experienced  such  sensa- 
tions before  or  since. 

This  was,  I  presume,  a  clear  case  of  at- 
tempted obsession,  first  of  Mr.  X.,  then  of  me; 
it  seemed  quite  clear  that  some  external  entity 
of  a  most  dangerous  kind  was  present  at  these 
sittings ;  it  illustrated  one  of  the  greatest  dan- 
gers connected  with  psychic  work. 

I  cannot  urge  too  much  on  my  readers  that 
the  greatest  caution  should  be  used  in  the 
choice  of  sitters,  and  also  that  unpleasant  com- 
municators should  be  dismissed;  the  dangers 
of  obsession  are  hardly  realized  by  those  who 
have  not  had  some  experience  of  them. 

What  I  have  said  in  this  book  must  be  taken 
as  simply  distilled  from  my  own  work;  I 
should  be  glad  to  put  forward  some  definite 
theory  as  to  the  origin  of  automatic  communi- 
cation, but  I  candidly  admit  that  my  experi- 


SUMMING  UP  153 

ences  have  been  so  contradictory  that  no 
theory  covers  the  whole  field.  I  feel  pretty 
well  assured  that  we  are  dealing  with  external 
entities  of  some  kind,  and  a  few  messages  I 
have  had,  purporting  to  come  from  persons 
who  had  passed  over,  seemed  impossible  to  ex- 
plain except  as  direct  or  indirect  communica- 
tion from  them.  This,  of  course,  is  the  point 
of  vital  interest  for  most  people — this  evidence 
of  survival  beyond  the  grave;  it  seems  fairly 
clear  that  those  who  have  joined  the  majority 
continue  to  exist  in  some  form;  nebulous  or 
not,  who  knows  ?  The  earth-memory  remains, 
for  a  time  at  least,  but  whether  the  spirit 
speaks  to  us  directly,  through  a  "control,"  or 
only  when  dreaming,  no  one  can  say;  the  ex- 
treme uncertainty  of  the  messages  received 
and  the  mixture  of  fact  and  fiction  point  to 
the  latter  idea. 

Before  I  close  I  should  like  to  refer  to  one 
more  point  which  has  interested  me  lately. 
Some  people  cherish  the  idea  that  much  literary 


154  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

and  artistic  work  might  be  accomplished 
through  the  agency  of  controls,  or  shall  we 
merely  say  through  automatism?  There  is  a 
good  deal  of  evidence,  I  think,  that  stories  and 
poems  have  been  written,  pictures  painted,  and 
even  music  composed,  by  psychic  means.  Of 
the  actual  artistic  merits  of  these  works  I 
know  nothing.  In  our  circle,  poor  doggerel 
has  come  through  Eyen,  and  tales,  some  of  a 
very  striking  nature;  through  him  and  other 
controls,  plots  have  been  unfolded  which 
might  well  afford  material  for  fiction  or  drama. 
What  is  remarkable  when  these  fabrics  are 
woven  at  the  ouija-board  is  the  amazing 
rapidity  with  which  the  pattern  of  the  plot  de- 
velops; the  traveler  flies  from  letter  to  letter, 
seldom  pausing  for  a  word;  the  story  reveals 
itself  quite  as  quickly  as  if  one  were  telling  a 
well-known  tale.  It  would  be  flattering  to  be- 
lieve that  this  is  a  mere  awakening  of  latent 
creative  power  in  the  sitters;  I  cannot  credit 
that  idea.    These  plots  are  certainly  not  in  the 


SUMMING  UP  155 

consciousness  of  the  mediums.  At  these  sit- 
tings one  is  reminded  of  deep-sea  fishing;  one 
cannot  predict  whether  a  flat  fish,  an  eel,  or  a 
whiting"  will  be  drawn  up  by  the  line.  Some  of 
these  tales  are  modern,  some  are  ancient ;  most 
of  them  are  melodramatic,  some  very  original. 
I  am  convinced  that  they  come  through  an  ex- 
ternal influence,  though  they  may  be  tinged 
by  the  medium's  literary  taste.  I  do  not  antici- 
pate that  artistic  work  of  the  highest  order 
will  ever  come  through  automatism,  but  I 
think  the  development  of  fiction  by  the  control 
is  most  interesting  and  well  worth  attention, 
whether  one  admits  the  presence  of  an  influ- 
ence outside  the  medium  or  attributes  this  phe- 
nomenon to  an  abnormal  quickening  of  the 
medium's  creative  power  in  a  state  of  semi- 
hypnosis.  I  should  greatly  like  to  have  the  ex- 
perience of  many  sitters  in  this  line  of 
research. 

The  question  may  fairly  be  asked,  "Is  the 
game  worth  the  candle?"    With  such  small  re- 


156  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

suits  is  it  worth  while  to  sit  night  after  night 
and  endure  much  dullness  and  fatigue  for  the 
sake  of  an  occasional  thrill?  I  find  it  hard 
to  decide;  I  have  been  fairly  satisfied  that  the 
dead  survive,  though  the  proofs  I  have  had 
were  not  at  all  sensational.  Surely  that  is  an 
important  point.  I  should  be  glad  to  give  hope 
and  comfort  to  those  who  have  suffered  during 
the  past  four  years  of  war;  whose  happiness 
has  been  shattered  by  the  loss  of  those  near 
and  dear  to  them.  All  I  can  tell  them  con- 
scientiously is  that  I  believe  the  spirits  of  those 
who  have  gone  out  into  darkness  live  on,  and 
for  a  time,  at  least,  preserve  their  memory  of 
earth. 

So  now  that  I  have  arrived  at  my  finai 
words,  I  feel  I  cannot  have  satisfied  anyone; 
not  the  eager  believer — for  any  faith  I  pos- 
sess rests  on  very  small  foundations;  not  the 
keen  student  of  psychic  matters — for  I  can- 
not say  that  I  think  these  studies  should  ab- 
sorb anyone  while  the  world  provides  work  to 


SUMMING  UP  157 

be  done  which  brings  in  so  much  richer  results ; 
and  not  the  determined  skeptic — for  my  in- 
clination is  to  smile  at  him  as  one  would  at  an 
obstinate  child;  not  to  argue  with  him,  but  to 
leave  him  firm  in  his  faith,  for  he  is  the  really 
credulous  person,  the  true  believer  in  himself 
who  never  pauses  to  consider  our  limitations. 


APPENDIX 

HINTS  TO  EXPERIMENTERS  AT  THE 
OUIJA-TABLE 

BE  careful  that  the  room  in  which  the  sit- 
ting is  to  take  place  is  a  quiet  one ;  a  noisy 
street  or  sounds  in  the  house  are  very  disturb- 
ing to  a  sitting,  a  ticking  clock  in  the  room  even 
may  annoy  the  control. 

Be  sure  that  the  seats  at  the  ouija-table  are 
high  enough  to  allow  the  sitters'  hands  to  be 
on  a  level  with  it  so  that  there  is  no  strain  on 
the  arm  and  the  hand  can  rest  on  the  traveler 
in  a  completely  relaxed  state. 

The  light  in  the  room  should  be  sufficient  for 
the  person  reading  at  the  board  to  see  clearly, 
but  not  so  brilliant  as  to  strain  the  eyes.    It  is 

158 


APPENDIX  159 

important  that  the  temperature  of  the  room 
should  be  agreeable.  Any  discomfort  to  the 
sitters  keeps  back  results. 

Not  more  than  two  people  outside  the  sitters 
are  desirable.  Any  crowd  or  feeling  of  strain 
or  even  whispered  conversation  is  sure  to  in- 
terfere writh  the  controls. 

Everyone  present  should  be  calm  and 
patient.  Do  not  press  for  results.  One  dis- 
turbing presence  in  a  room  can  ruin  a  sitting. 
Select  those  who  habitually  come  to  your  sit- 
tings with  great  care. 

Be  sure  that  you  have  all  that  is  necessary 
for  the  sitting  conveniently  at  hand  before  you 
begin.  A  silk  duster  for  polishing  the  glass,  a 
bottle  of  methylated  spirit  and  some  French 
chalk  are  generally  useful.  It  is  essential  that 
the  glass  should  be  well  polished  and  the 
traveler  properly  shod  so  that  jerking  and 
creaking  may  be  avoided. 

Arrange  that  no  one  is  admitted  to  the  room 
during  the  sitting.    The  most  interesting  com- 


160  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

munications  may  be  broken  off  by  a  servant 
entering  the  room  or  even  knocking  at  the 
door.  The  sitters  should  rest  at  the  end  of 
every  half  hour  or  so.  No  sitting  should  ever 
continue  for  more  than  two  hours. 

It  is  almost  useless  to  sit  in  disturbed  or 
stormy  weather.  Turmoil  in  the  atmosphere 
seems  to  affect  psychic  communication. 

Never  sit  when  you  are  tired  and  ailing. 
This  is  a  useless  expenditure  of  force  and  the 
controls  will  at  once  recognize  your  physical 
condition.  If  a  control  (no  matter  how 
familiar  you  are  with  him)  suggests  seizure  or 
obsession  take  your  hand  off  the  traveler  at 
once  and  break  off  the  communication. 

Treat  your  controls  and  the  communicators 
they  bring  with  courtesy  as  you  would  any 
guest  at  your  house.  If  they  are  undesirable 
you  will  probably  soon  discover  it,  if  you  ob- 
serve carefully.  A  mocking  or  discourteous 
attitude  very  naturally  retards  the  com- 
munication. 


APPENDIX  161 

Never  encourage  communicators  who  pro- 
fess to  have  led  evil  and  criminal  lives.  The 
fact  that  they  tell  you  these  facts  generally 
means  that  they  will  eventually  attempt 
obsession. 

It  is  best  not  to  call  up  any  special  communi- 
cator. There  are  two  obvious  objections  to 
doing  so;  it  may  bring  the  subsconsciousness 
of  the  sitter  into  play  and  assuming  that  im- 
personation is  frequent  it  opens  the  door  to 
fraudulent  spirits. 

Do  not  interrupt  your  communicators  with 
frequent  questions.  Let  them  talk  as  much  as 
they  will  and  only  say  what  is  necessary. 
Otherwise  if  you  reflect  on  what  has  passed 
you  will  find  the  communication  comes  chiefly 
from  yourself. 

Do  not  sit  more  than  twice  a  week  at  most. 
It  is  far  better  to  sit  regularly  in  this  way  for 
a  reasonable  time  than  to  have  an  occasional 
sitting  of  longer  duration. 

Take  a  record  of  every  sitting  whether  in- 


162  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

teresting  or  the  reverse.  It  is  only  by  heaped 
up  evidence,  good  and  bad,  that  you  can  attain 
to  any  conclusion  as  to  the  nature  of  your 
results. 

If  either  sitter  shows  signs  of  trance  con- 
ditions coming  on  or  becomes  excited  or  hys- 
terical, break  off  the  sitting  at  once.  You  can- 
not foretell  the  result  if  you  continue. 

The  preceding  hints  may  be  useful  to  begin- 
ners for  whose  benefit  I  have  jotted  them  down. 
I  have  perhaps  hardly  emphasized  enough  the 
importance  of  the  careful  selection  of  sitters 
and  the  fact  that  good  work  must  be  the  result 
of  patience  and  regularity.  Strangers  in  the 
room  nearly  always  check  free  and  satisfactory 
communications.  The  control  or  discarnate 
spirit  or  sub-conscious  mind  seems  more  sensi- 
tive to  atmosphere  than  the  living  human 
being. 

Curiously  enough  I  find  sex  is  a  factor  in 
the  choice  of  sitters.  The  best  combination  for 
ouija-work  is   a   man   and  a  woman.     Two 


APPENDIX  163 

women  sometimes  work  excellently  together, 
but  I  have  never  come  across  an  instance  of 
any  results  worth  speaking  of  being  achieved 
by  two  men. 

Many  inexperienced  people  think  that  be- 
cause a  discarnate  spirit  professes  to  speak  to 
them  this  entity  must  of  necessity  possess 
miraculous  powers.  "Can  it  tell  what  horse 
will  win  the  Derby  ?"  or  "Ask  it  when  the  War 
will  end."  These  persons  must  learn  that,  so 
far  as  we  can  tell,  discarnate  spirits  and  con- 
trols are  much  in  our  own  position  unless  spe- 
cially gifted  with  prevision,  and  that  when  this 
quality  is  present  it  is  almost  invariably  per- 
sonal— connected  with  some  sitter  in  whom  the 
control  or  communicator  is  interested.  Dis- 
carnate spirits  seem  to  lose  touch  with  this 
world  rapidly;  they  have  only  an  occasional 
flash  of  memory  at  most  I  believe. 

My  last  word  to  those  who  purpose  to  ex- 
periment in  automatic  communication  is,  be 
patient,  be  prudent,  never  let  an  unbalanced  or 


164  VOICES  FROM  THE  VOID 

hysterical  person  be  present  at  your  sittings; 
be  satisfied  with  small  results  and  look  for 
nothing  sensational,  work  regularly  and  do 
not  let  dull  sittings  discourage  you.  With 
caution  and  wisdom  much  may  be  achieved. 


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